NORR is an employee-owned A&E firm with a team of 800 architects, engineers, planners, and interior designers who collaborate from offices located in Canada, the US, UK, and UAE.
SITUATION
NORR and CrucialLogics began their relationship over two years ago at a CIO Association meeting. NORR’s VP of IT, Ashroff Khan, sought out Nim Nadarajah, Partner and leader of CrucialLogics’ CxO Advisory Services, after hearing positive feedback from other CIO Association members. Khan was immediately impressed by CrucialLogics’ non-sales approach, which focused on asking questions to solve problems. He comments, “It was very much about the needs of our organization, not what drives revenue for CrucialLogics.”
NORR was going through a digital and an organizational transformation, which was creating pain points across IT. Khan notes, “Nim became my sounding board for discussing IT and organizational strategy and challenges around transformation – even though CrucialLogics wasn’t helping us with these.” He continues, “Nim brought in not just his own viewpoint but also lessons learned from other organizations, in addition to introducing me to people who had been through something similar.”
SOLUTION
CrucialLogics could see that NORR was at that intersection of IT strategy and organizational strategy where a move to the cloud would make sense. Khan comments, “Nim was pushing me early on in the direction of what he called the modernization of our cloud and our desktop. He had the vision of where we needed to go. It made sense, so I entrusted the job to him and CrucialLogics.”
Over the next two years, CrucialLogics worked on implementing NORR’s modernization program, and then COVID hit. Khan comments, “It was because of those efforts that we were able to move 750 people to work from home within two weeks. If we hadn’t laid that foundation, we would have struggled.”
While planning their IT modernization, Khan appreciated CrucialLogics’ advisory-first approach, recommending ways to tackle projects – with a long-term view and in a well-thought-out order – whether or not CrucialLogics would be involved. Khan comments, “We spent a lot of time discussing what should happen 2, 3, 4 years out. We took a multi-year viewpoint around the different pieces of technology, which would inform a lot of the IT strategy, which would then help accomplish a lot of the business strategies.”
RESULTS
Both CrucialLogics and NORR understand that digital transformation is a continuous and evolving process, which makes defining scope of work difficult. Khan comments, “CrucialLogics isn’t defined by the nuances of a contract and scope of work. They don’t count the pennies. They worry about how your organization can benefit and how they can help.” Nim and CrucialLogics’ Advisory take the time to not only keep up with the day-to-day aspects of NORR’s business but also their industry. Khan comments, “I’ll bring things that I’m struggling with, and I’ll get a very different perspective from Nim. He connects the dots from inside and outside the industry, and that helps me get a 360o viewpoint, so he ends up also being my blind spot check.”