Services
Lazy Electron offers a range of services suitable for small to medium businesses who need to make the most of their technology budgets and may not have or need a large permanent team for these items.
Business Consulting
Process Analysis
Are you solving the right problems for your business? Technology is often used to solve business problems by automating processes. Automating all or part of an ineffective process introduces waste and additional maintenance, because the technology is unfortunately solving the wrong problem. For optimal solutions, the problem must be well understood, and process analysis is key tool in this endeavor. Sometimes, a problem may be solved with minimal or no technology changes, by adjusting the underlying business process. We are able to help you with the task of observing, mapping, and measuring your key value streams, so that you can view them holistically and consider where adjustments may be helpful.
Business Case Development
Are you considering a large purchase or other initiative, for which you need to create a business case to secure resources? We have experience developing business cases for various types of projects, and can help you with defining your problem, identifying and evaluating potential solutions, deciding which solution you want to recommend, and documenting it with or for you.
Training & Development Plans
Do you have a team or an individual employee that needs to learn new skills or level up in some particular area? Based on the skills needed, and the skills already present, we can help you identify relevant training and development activities, and document them into a plan that can be more or less formal depending on your needs.
We have several years of management experience where it has been necessary to redesign jobs, draft job descriptions and develop training plans to transition employees to new and changing roles. We have the philosophy that it’s better to keep a good employee by redeploying them when needs change. Similarly, we believe that an overall strong employee with a couple of weak spots is worth trying to keep by helping them clearly understand the improvement needed and concrete steps they can take.
Project Management
Do you have a project that needs a bit of coordination but you just don’t have the time? We have a certified project manager on the team that can help you with developing project plans, tracking status, and identifying areas of concern. We can also help you with identifying and producing the types of information radiators that your team needs for your project.
Technical Writing
Do you need help with documentation? We are able to help with a wide array of documentation, such as user guides, project charters and requirements, incident response plans, and so on. Contact us to see if we are suited for your documentation needs!
Technology Consulting
Software Selection and Implementation
Buying and setting up new software tools is time-consuming. We can help you and your team reduce the time taken away from your other priorities and duties by assisting with the software selection and implementation process. We can help with all or some of the steps to define the problem and solution criteria, identify potential solutions, initial vetting to identify a short list, secondary vetting through trials or pilots with your team, implementation, rollout, and handoff to your team for ongoing management. Many of these steps are best done together to ensure success, we’re here to partner with you and take on some of the load.
Custom Software Development
Some problems don’t have a readily available off-the-shelf solution, or the commercial solutions aren’t suitable for whatever reason. If your build versus buy analysis indicates you should build, we can help. We have a senior software engineer on the team who can help you and your team design and implement your custom solution.
Database Analysis and Optimization
It is difficult to overstate the importance of a business’ data assets. Small and medium businesses may not have need of a full time database administrator, but they still need their critical business databases to be well structured, running well, and properly backed up. We have years of experience working with databases, and can help you evaluate yours and make improvements as needed.
Business Intelligence and Reporting
All businesses need to make strategic and operational decisions, and often struggle to collect the right information to inform those decisions. People can spend lots of time just trying to find the information, and even more time trying to put it all together in a cohesive and easy to understand way. We can use our experience in business intelligence and analytics to help you address the problem of taking data and turning it into knowledge that empowers your business.
Senior as a Service
Our Senior as a Service offering is a subscription plan designed to allow you and your team access to an experienced professional for the purposes of assisting with the types of work described above. This is a great option to consider if you have a small team and do not need a full time senior engineer or analyst, but do need one sometimes for help with troubleshooting, architecture and system design decisions, code reviews, or other matters related to how your organization uses technology to enable business processes and solve problems. With Senior as a Service, you will receive a pool of hours each month and the option to secure additional hours on an as-needed basis at a reduced hourly rate.
Part Time Staff Augmentation
Many times small businesses have technical or analytical work that needs to be done, where the workload does not justify a full time hire. You can use our part time staff augmentation services for these types of items. Based on your needs, we will suggest project-based or subscription-based staff augmentation. Similar to Senior as a Service, subscription-based staff augmentation would provide you with a pool of hours each month and the option to secure additional hours as-needed at a reduced hourly rate.