As 2021 draws to a close, the team at 9Yards has begun reflecting on our accomplishments. Despite the difficulties presented by the pandemic, it’s shown us that when given the opportunity, 9Yards has a proven ability to help our clients thrive. What’s more, we’re excited to be launching our blog!

Adapting to a second year of the Covid-19 pandemic

Given the challenges presented by Covid-19, we’re proud of the way our change management offerings have adapted to the ‘new normal’. The 9Yards team works comfortably remotely: across video calls, virtual catchups and the realities of working from home – and our ability to respond to our clients’ needs are better than ever due to this flexibility.

9Yards’ CEO and Director Shane Jones says, “Although Covid-19 has had a major impact on high-level projects, we’ve identified ways to ease disruptions by implementing different ways to host meetings, facilitate retrospectives and encourage the professional development of our staff.”

“Ultimately, we’re a people organisation: our product is people, and our organisation is people.”

How we supported our clients

Expanded digital consultancy offerings

“With a customer base that keeps growing across the country, we’re excited to see that we’re also connecting with new clients due to word of mouth,” Shane said. “This year we’ve engaged with small- to medium-sized organisations, with a focus on rural areas. This offers 9Yards unique insight into the Australian business journey.”

Over the past twelve months, 9Yards has broadened its client-base to include organisations in the health and utility sectors. It’s been an interesting process: while each business requires a unique solution, we’ve noticed that many of our clients face similar hurdles when it comes to the implementation and development of new systems.

For 9Yards, this has presented as an opportunity to showcase our expertise in consultancy and change management while ensuring we listen to our clients first and foremost. Shane says, “With the growth of new technologies, clients need assurance that they’re working with experts – us! – who care about their role in their industry.”

Fostering existing relationships

This year, 9Yards partnered with existing clients in finance, government, and not-for-profit organisations to support them through the current climate. “We’re aware of an increased focus around security and cyber risks, which means that protecting our clients’ assets is a key area of concern. We’re able to support them to protect their customer data and we’re proud to be partners in this mission,” Shane said.

Further, our clients often tell us that outdated software leads to disruptions and greater customer dissatisfaction. 9Yards Senior Consultant Jodie Rugless says, “In the world of emerging tech and software integration, many companies are finding that older systems disrupt their customer’s experience and don’t deliver on what they need. 9Yards supports our clients to ease them into the future of their own sector.” Since the future of many sectors is rapidly advancing, being able to lead our clients through new ways of working empowers them to be their own industry leader.

For instance, we supported Uniting Financial Services (UFS) to review its core banking service provisioning, from a contractual and operation perspective. To do this, we provided a series of recommendations designed to offer clarity around service levels, a means of determining cost methodologies for up front and ongoing licencing charges, data migration responsibilities and system acceptance criteria. Ultimately, this led to the decision to retain the existing platform. Read more about our work with UFS.

Staying up to date with digital trends

The 9Yards team continues to research and engage with our industry’s digital trends, staying ahead to help our clients showcase their leadership. One way we’ve done this is to explore new architecture capabilities that enhance product features and functions.

Our solution architects provide clients with the right approach to translate business, technical and information requirements into functional specifications. And the rising shift in open composable architecture has meant that our clients are able to engage more easily with this process. This leads to less time spent relying on specialists, empowering our clients to perform updates using plug-and-play platforms allows for greater business agility at a significantly more affordable cost.

We’ve also aimed to help organisations realise their goals without promoting a specific product solution in the beginning. Together we find the right product that directly supports their vision. “One of our strengths is that we have the ability to apply and adapt to trends as they come. We have the knowledge to understand how a tool or practice may uniquely function in that sector,” Jodie said.

Change management into 2022

Here at 9Yards, we’re excited about what 2022 has to offer. We’re looking forward to increasing our focus on brand development and marketing to showcase what we do, and to continue supporting our new and existing clients. Looking to start your next digital transformation project? Get in touch with our team of experts today.