First, the necessary company background details. Yeah, I know this part is as exciting as the reading of the rules during the Academy Awards followed by the introduction of the suits from Price Waterhouse (oops, there goes any links from the PWC blog) but it is important that you know who we are and where we are coming from.
Court Square is a managed service company also providing IT solutions for companies in transition. Our Good Systems Practice methodology combines an ITIL framework with PMI best practices.
Yes, I know that's alphabet soup but I promise you that unlike canned soup, our ideas do not have a high sodium content. We believe strongly in best practices as healthy for our industry. And we welcome your feedback on those ideas.
We've been alive and kicking since 1995 and now have offices in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey. We primarily service the northeast but have traveled globally on behalf of our clients. (Hey everyone, don't forget that after next month, you need a passport to get back into the US. Although there are a few of my colleagues that I hope do forget. Just kidding…..Maybe)
Why Court Square in the Round? It isn't because we have some kind of obsession with geometric shapes. "In the Round" in Shakespearean theater days meant the audience was all around the players. Now this meant that sometimes the audience didn't get the best viewpoint, but at the very least they got a different perspective. And we hope that is what we can offer with this blog. No, not a view of the back of my head but different perspectives about what is going on either within IT best practices or more specifically, how they relate to our target market segments of life sciences, financial services or manufacturing. We'll also talk about what we think is working in those industries and what isn't.
We'll try to keep you informed not only of our activities at shows and conferences but also important industry events. We'll also throw in some unrelated fun stuff in the calendar because while at Court Square we take our work very seriously, we try not to take ourselves very seriously.
So what exactly do we do? We specialize in projects and managed services supporting a company's IT infrastructure. Everything behind the applications, the brains of your company's IT environment. No, we don't support simple desktop stuff like if you find that your printer is jammed and you can't get your resume to come out right. You shouldn't be doing that on company time anyway.
I mentioned earlier that we provide IT solutions for companies in transition. I always get asked "what do you mean by transition?" It's not transition like a butterfly metamorphous or anything or even serious transition like puberty. Company transition is just as important but without the drama, tears and rolling of the eyes. Hmmm, on second thought, maybe company transition is like puberty.
Transition is driven by business events or technology events. Our clients are usually experiencing the pain of a merger where the two systems don't talk to each other. Or a divestiture where all of a sudden they have to disconnect from the corporate mothership. Other business transition drivers include rapid growth when your startup takes off or you've got a new product that is ready to launch so your actual sales can match that hockey stick forecast you showed your CFO.
The toughest area of transition that our clients face is regulatory issues. You know where you have some government regulation sitting on your industry that requires an auditor who may have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed to come in and assess your IT environment. This is common in life sciences with the FDA regulations or financial services who have the FDIC or FFIEC knocking on their door. And a whole bunch of companies are worried about SOX. (I don't mean the Red Sox. The only thing I worry about there is being able to afford a $25 Fenway Frank if they sign Daisuke Matsuzaka for $50M.) Sarbanes-Oxley impacts more than just public companies and many companies are not prepared for that. (And believe it or not, companies are spending more each year trying to comply. Shouldn’t the costs be going down by now?)
Court Square doesn't care about the type of regulation. To us, working in a regulated industry is just another business process. But we understand that some companies need help. And that's why we're here.
Other drivers of transition include the need to migrate from a legacy platform to something more modern than a Model T. Or maybe your infrastructure is too bloated from the Y2K party and you need to consolidate your servers or data centers. Take a look at your capacity and see if there's room to save money and space. Or let us do it for you. The bottom line is companies staff for day-to-day. They don't staff for big events. We LIVE for those. Have tux, will travel.
The other side of our coin is managed services. We'll take over some or all of your infrastructure. We'll do it onsite or we'll do it remotely if you don't want to see our shining faces every day. We can manage your infrastructure from across the street or across the country. It's all about Good Systems Practice. But we recognize that some companies may not be ready for GSP right out of the gate. Sort of like "Hello, how are you, let's get married." That's OK, we'll talk to you about your business needs and figure it out together.
Well, that's it for the intro. If you're still reading, thanks for sticking with us. We'll take a break for the holidays and come back to talk to you again in January. We want to talk to you about things like
Server Consolidation: Don't be afraid of the dark
IT in Regulated Environments: Stop the audit, I want to get off.
IT Engineers versus Quality Engineers: Celebrity Death Match.
In the meantime, if you want to learn more about us, you can check out our super serious corporate website at www.csdg.com. We're growing like crazy and are always looking for new hires so if you want to live and work in the northeast, send a resume to employment@csdg.com
A safe and prosperous New Year to you and we'll catch you on the flip side.
The Marketing Maven
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Pharmaceutical Regulations
Sarbanes Oxley
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