Overstretched IT teams? Here’s how project services can help 

Lachlan Jefferies Retail Team Lead

The tech industry is undergoing considerable and rapid shifts, with innovation the key driving force. And that means IT teams are stretched thin, juggling not only the day-to-day operations, but also trying to wrangle strategic, new technologies to make their companies unique and safe.

To remedy this, more and more CIOs are turning to project service providers to help them achieve their goals. This is evident in Australia, with IT services making up the largest IT spending category—projecting an estimated total spend of AU$53.4 billion this year.

Our project-based IT services work to deliver targeted solutions to help companies stay competitive and innovative. It’s a way to relieve the pressure on IT teams to have every type of technical expertise in-house, liberating them to operate in a more modular, nimble way—plugging in specialist skills to match the unique project requirements. 

The biggest projects IT teams are focused on

Most clients I work with are putting their primary focus into cybersecurity projects. No wonder, given last year, reports of data breaches to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) were up 25% from the previous year.

Cybersecurity isn’t a field where someone from your internal IT department should be learning as they go. The landscape is changing every single day, with new threats coming through in myriad ways. 

In my experience, CIOs are looking to hand bigger security projects over to external teams like us who work in the field every day and, due to this constant exposure, are more adept at spotting critical security gaps. For example, some of our clients have found, through penetration testing, their users need to be setting up multi-factor authentication (MFA). Our project services team will go in and deploy MFA to their hundreds of users, making sure it's set up correctly and that it’s going to the right users for the right applications.

We also support big infrastructure overlifts, where clients are wanting to replace old architecture with newer technologies so their teams can collaborate more effectively. For example, one project saw us step in to help lift data from physical services at a customer site and into the cloud, with offsite data centre hosting.

Innovation, especially in the AI and automation space, is also a big motivator for bringing on external partners. In 2023, 46% of businesses in Australia reported being actively innovative, with 33% of that cohort collaborating with external parties in order to achieve their goals. 

And that’s the thing—companies are seeking out project service providers who’ve got a proven track record of successfully handling the goals they’re working towards or issues they want to resolve. With so much change happening in the tech space, no company’s IT department can do it all on their own. Even a tech company like us doesn’t operate in a silo—we work with peers and partners for both in-house and external projects.

I’m seeing organisations looking for long-term project partners who can deliver on multiple projects that are often dependent on each other in terms of structure. Just last week, we had a client commit their next 10 projects to us and we’ve got another client doing the same. 

There’s not a single company out there that can do absolutely everything, which is why outsourcing is critical to everyone’s success.

Our holistic services team 

It’s best to think about the process of starting an IT project a bit like constructing a building. You need a vision, a plan, skilled hands to bring it to life, and someone to keep everything on track. At Truis, our project services team works the same way.  

To start working on a project with a client, we bring in our solution architects, who build out the scope and set their sights on understanding the goal we’re trying to achieve.

Once the client signs off on the scope, the project is handed over to our project engineers, who’ll find ways to bring that vision to life. Think of them as building engineers who work to make everything structurally sound and calculate exactly what’s needed to get the job done.

Our field engineers are then given the plan. They’re like the tradespeople on a job site. They’re on the tools, using their skills and expertise to build that end product.
 
This is all overseen by our project managers who make sure the project is aligned to the original scope, stays on track, and that everyone’s informed if things need to change. 

Over the years, we’ve learned the critical importance of every partner sharing that collective vision, as early as possible. A successful project is when everyone is on the same page, shooting for the same goal, and across every ‘why’. If there’s an issue in a project, you can often trace it back to something as simple as one party not being consulted, or a seemingly small detail not being properly understood in the initial stages. 

How Truis helped Best & Less transform their POS system

A great example of project services in action is our recent work with Best & Less, where we led the transformation of their in-store IT systems.

They were working with legacy POS devices that were frequently failing and dated operating systems that were leaving the company open to cybersecurity vulnerabilities. The risk of exposing business data coupled with constant offline periods added up to a business-critical need for a better solution.

Their Head of IT Craig Nobbs turned to Truis to help deliver a seamless POS refresh, rolling out devices to their 188 stores without disrupting the customer experience. We collaborated with HP to determine the ideal specifications for the new POS devices, developed a migration strategy with the least impact on business operations, and ran a pilot phase at select stores. Following this, we managed all the logistics of the national distribution. 

Read the full case study here.

Looking to connect on a project?

We understand that no two organisations, or projects, are alike.That’s why we offer three different types of project services, to support every team.

The first is what we call a defined outcome project, where we’ve agreed what’s in scope, what’s out of scope, and what that clear end goal is.

The second is what we call prepaid project services. We have a number of clients with a prepaid service with us which they can leverage at any time for ad-hoc project services.

And finally, we also offer a time-and-materials contract. Our most flexible option, this is ideal when the outcome is clear, but the scope and approach are not.

Looking for specialist support to take care of an IT project? Get in touch today to learn more about how our team can help yours.