"Right Size" Business Technology Support
Designed to Fit Your Budget and Your Vision
For Your Growing Business In A Connected World

Technology Objectives

Support Operational Needs With A Lean Foundation

• Provide strategic and tactical support
• Amplify competitive advantage with thoughtful use of emerging technology
• Maximize potential, minimize risk with incremental change
• Assure technology serves business needs and changing market dynamics
• Support specialized needs “Just In Time” and “As Needed”
• Leverage the "Connected World" intelligently to reduce cost through security conscious resource sharing
• Vendor agnostic. Focus on defining the issue, the solution, then build the right team and make your vision a reality

How Sabre Can Help

Support Pyramid

Planning

Project Management

Learn More

Helping Build Business Foundations
The Support Pyramid

At the outset, every business begins with an idea which becomes a Mission. The pyramid above helps summarize some of the critical layers that ultimately must be in place for a young business to grow and scale to the next level.
 
With experience the business owners develop Policies and Objectives that become general guidelines built from real world experience that help promote opportunities and avoid consequences of errors and omissions. As a company grows these lead to Procedures and Processes that speak to what functions must be carried out, and how, so that all the working entities of the organization work in concert.
 
In today’s world, this quickly results in the need for various forms of software to help capture important business data in an organized fashion resulting in the need for software, represented in the Application Layer.
 
There is a need then for the User at their desk to exchange information with others through applications, resulting in the need for a Communications layer.
 
While the complexity of Communication has evolved rapidly with the advent of the Internet, in recent years, the need for mobility and “Anytime Anywhere” computing has added to the challenge.
 
As a result what used to simply be the Communications Layer has now become the Communications, Mobility, and Cloud Layer. Shown here for simplicity as a single layer. Issues of security, response time, and up-time, have all become increasingly important. Additionally a new area, responsive design, has emerged because of the many new devices now being used. 
 
These last two layers are highly dependent on the design of the Front and Back End Services Layer, and ultimately on the Infrastructure Layer.

The role of Sabre, in addition to supplemental daily operational support, is to help the smaller organization,  not yet ready to build an IT department; or the larger IT organization that could use some additional help, build and fine tune these layers so they can help the organization scale to the next level.

---

Learn More

Aligning The Players With The Vision
Variable Resourcing

The need for planning ranges from simple to complex and short or extended time frames. Sabre aims to provide support based on a long term relationship that flexes with your business needs. As companies grow from startup to established, large scale organizations we believe flexible support is a valuable resource.

New and growing companies may be less formal and built around a single  spontaneous idea. These can be fragile and need a fine balance of prudent planning avoidance of “paralysis through analysis” that may inadvertently stunt growth at a crucial moment. It is important at this stage to allow the business to grow organically.  Flexibility is key.
 
As the concept proves worthy more formal planning and better information is needed as Cash Flow becomes a limiting factor for an organically growing enterprise. Basic "off the shelf" programs like QuickBooks and  well-crafted spreadsheets, possibly in conjunction with simple database applications may be all that is needed at first.
 
Over time, with further success, the needs of the business and the expectations of lenders,or possibly venture capital investors, dictate more sophisticated tools.  Buzzwords like ERP, CRM, B2B, EDI, POS, AdTech, MarTech and related systems all come to mind. They all have to do with helping scale the business.

The Support Pyramid in the previous section suggests that as the Policies and Objectives change in response to market dynamics, they can impact demands throughout the foundation of the Support Pyramid.

Procedures, Processes, Applications, Communications Requirements, Data Processing Services, and Hardware Infrastructure can all be impacted.

These layers involve multiple skill sets and an awareness of how the moving parts inter-relate. They also demonstrate how the changes may impact the overall dynamics of the business.  Because of this significant changes in short term workloads, learning curves, and a need for careful planning can all be expected.  Sabre can help should the need arise.

Learn More

Plan, Managing Expectation, Schedule and Budget

Overview - A key role of Sabre is to assist management in aligning resources, identifying key tasks, and executing the plan to schedule, while helping manage the budget and timeline. In the process a key function is to alert management to potential risk and help  develop mitigation strategies as needed.
 
Although the need to manage projects is evident, the resources to do so are not always readily available.  Projects by definition are extraordinary business events that are not normally part of the day to day operational staff responsibilities.   
 
Thinking of a  project as a business in miniature; or as an airplane flying from New York to Los Angeles, both can involve substantial resources in terms of labor, capital equipment, and time.  In both cases there is a need for managing quality closely. If not executed properly the financial and liability risks may be substantial.
 
Project management seeks to clearly identify objectives as laid out in the plan and provide regular feedback with respect to  progress.   As in aviation, a  small error in heading detected early is easily corrected .  The same error, left unattended could have us waking up in Seattle instead of Los Angeles, or worse not arriving at all.
 
Methodologies – There are a number of approaches to project management including Agile, Scrum, Critical Path and Waterfall.  Some would refer to the Project Management Institute (PMI) Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) as a methodology as well, though it is more an organizational structure that brings these methodologies together.
 
The best methodology and how it is best implemented depends on the situation. The number and type of resources assigned, the level of agreement on time frame, financial budget, and  overall complexity are a few considerations.
  
All methods are concerned with defining deliverables, establishing accountability, attaching a timeline, and providing regular feedback so management can take early and appropriate action when needed to efficiently manage to a schedule and a budget.
 
More On Methodologies and Coaching

Learn More

Back To Top