Blackstone Technology Group

Blackstone Technology Group and its partners have established a new informational site regarding the upcoming Department of Homeland Security (DHS) EAGLE II Acquisition, at http://eagle2.bstonetech.com . This Drupal/Open Atrium-based site provides news and information regarding the progress of the DHS EAGLE II program, the relevance and experience of the Blackstone Technology Group Team regarding the acquisition, and other material to help program stakeholders understand the full scope and details of Blackstone’s current DHS activities and the full Blackstone Technology Group DHS EAGLE II value proposition.

Blackstone Technology Group Receives California Information Technology Master Services Agreement Award

Sacramento, CA – August 4, 2010 – As a top provider of Technology Consulting Services to the State of California, Blackstone Technology Group, Inc. announced today the expansion of its ability to serve California government by being awarded a California Information Technology Master Services Agreement (IT MSA).   This award enables Blackstone to offer both expanded and enhanced IT services to all State of California Agencies.

With the IT MSA Award, Blackstone can further support Project Implementation Services and Project Support Services within California State Government. Blackstone is now on all the major State of California procurement vehicles including the California Multiple Award Schedule (CMAS) and the CalPERS Spring Fed Pool (SFP).

“We are excited to extend our reach to all State Agencies that utilize the IT MSA.” said Rick Venegas, Sr. Director of Blackstone’s CA State Government Practice. “This award reflects our commitment to the State of California. With our past performance and strong reputation, We believe that Blackstone will continue to be the vendor of choice to deliver optimal results across a wide array of initiatives in state government.”

About Blackstone
Blackstone Technology Group is a global IT consultancy and staff augmentation firm.  Blackstone’s mission is to implement innovative IT and business process solutions that help its clients address industry challenges, cost containment and transformation strategies in their competitive marketplaces.  Founded in 1998, Blackstone has garnered a 12-year track record of delivering successful results, with a customer list that includes many Fortune 1000 businesses as well as multiple US Federal and California State Agencies. Company headquarters are located in San Francisco, California, with additional offices in Sacramento, Denver and Washington DC. To learn more about Blackstone’s CA State Government Practice visit the State and Local Government Section of www.bstonetech.com.

Contacts
Blackstone Technology Group
Rick Venegas, Sr. Director, CA State Government Practice
(916) 768-6867
rvenegas@bstonetech.com
www.bstonetech.com

We have built our Staff Augmentation Practice with care, with each Recruiter and Account Manager carrying significant experience and industry relationships. We take pride in both the foundation of our staffing methodology and the quality of our deliverables. Read more here

Microsoft Business Intelligence and Performance Management solution demonstration, developed by Blackstone Technology Group. This demonstration is a modified example of an actual solution which was deployed for a Blackstone Technology Group customer in the Quick Service Restaurant industry.

Background

Information systems that support the automation of benefits adjudication decisions are available but not well known in their application.  The key functionality of such systems is to capture benefit information and identify if a favorable adjudication can be made.  To achieve this decision-making, the system validates the benefits information against specific business rules that it maintains.  Although some benefits adjudication decisions must be made manually, the automation of such decisions has proven to be a resounding achievement in the time required to make decisions as well as the cost of doing so

The Challenge

Develop a Business Process Management (BPM) solution that utilizes available benefits adjudication information systems  to addresses the challenges associated with automation using System Qualified Adjudication (SQA) within form I-90 and I-821 life-cycle management (immigration Green Card applications).

Performance

Working closely with client stakeholders to gather requirements, Blackstone developed and delivered robust requirements documents (System Requirements Document and Requirements Traceability Matrix), System Design Documents (SDD), Development Test Plan (DTP), Version Description Document (VDD), and use cases scenarios to clearly and concisely articulate the client’s needs and scope of the system.  The Blackstone team utilized Rapid Application Development methodologies to deliver a prototype solution with multiple proofs of concept.

Results

The successful completion of the project prototype proved to the client that a rules-based environment can be developed with speed and efficiency that could reduce operational overhead and streamline case management.  The final recommendation provided for an optimized solution that would utilize existing infrastructure where possible, leveraging the client’s current Enterprise Service Bus (ESB).  The system would also:

* Reduce Form I-90 Applications processing time from 18 hours to 2 minutes

* Reduce Form I-821 Processing Time from 6 hours to 2 minutes

* Develop three new enterprise-wide services

*Solidify TIBCO iProcess as client Business Process Management standards

Background

In order to provide the country with a new service while creating cross-agency synergies, the U.S. government created an umbrella department to oversee numerous previously-independent U.S. Government offices and agencies.  To fully realize cross-agency IT synergies, the department established an office under the CIO to streamline IT management.  This office was chartered with providing technical architecture planning, the delivery of enterprise IT services, improving efficiency of application delivery functions, improving enterprise IT integration and migrating off costly unsupported platforms.

As a new organization, this office will need to implement highly effective lifecycle processes that enable rapid service delivery, along with an effective customer engagement strategy to accelerate stakeholder adoption. This is a substantial task, and one that Blackstone understands well given our combined experience delivering solutions within both the Department’s Headquarters (HQ) and its Components.

The Challenge

Participating in the establishment of a new enterprise IT service office within the Government, Blackstone was tasked with both providing full life-cycle IT services and defining best practices for the continued management of the office.  Supporting multiple customers across this newly integrated agency, Blackstone is constantly reassessing its performance to more swiftly and efficiently distribute new capabilities and services via this office across multiple Government Agencies to meet the demanding temporal requirements set out in the mandate of the Agency itself.

Performance

Blackstone is successfully guiding the client to achieve a managed, robust, integrated and agile IT environment that provides the full synergies and efficiencies that were designed in the creation of the Department.

Results

Blackstone has been successfully delivering services and solutions to stand up a new full lifecycle development capability within this new organization. Blackstone is delivering in the following areas:

• Program/Project Management – Blackstone has been developing and implementing a customer-centric business model for developing/testing enterprise IT services
• Requirements Management – Blackstone is developing and implementing a comprehensive requirements management process leveraging tools such as the IBM Rational Suite to maintain traceability of requirements across the full lifecycle.
• Application Architecture Guidance – Blackstone is providing support for the definition of application architectures, and the evaluation and definition of application and technology standards
• Application Design and Development – Blackstone is leveraging various .NET and open source technologies to support the rapid development of enterprise application services.
• Testing – Blackstone is developing Testing Shared Service that will supply development and implementation teams with a range of testing services and capabilities necessary to rapidly develop high-quality applications.  This service includes the full range of testing capabilities including, but not limited to, test planning, automated test execution, continual integration testing, functional testing, stress/load testing, and 508 compliance testing.
• Business Process Reengineering (BPR) – Blackstone is developing and implementing a comprehensive BPR service for the department. To ensure the success of these initiatives, Blackstone is following an agile BPR approach, emphasizing frequent collaboration with system users to promote the intelligent refinement, simplification, and continuous improvement of business processes. These efforts assist the CIO’s office in supporting general business process improvement efforts in line with Department trends and policies.  This will ultimately enable the BPR Shared Service to decompose business processes and identify candidate services for implementation.
• Release Management – Blackstone is developing and implementing a comprehensive release management approach, supported by automated tools and services support mechanisms to include Rational ClearQuest, VMWare, and Serena. Blackstone’s Release Management approach includes processes and mechanisms for releasing software at various stages within the System Engineering Life Cycle (SELC). In addition, release management schedules and cycles are aligned to events and gate reviews described in the SELC, and further tailored to support delivery approaches selected for each individual service requirement (i.e., waterfall, iterative, agile). Blackstone’s release management process also defines rules, processes, and tools used for deploying “snapshots” of a system’s code base to multiple platforms to assist in design, development, testing, and production deployment.
• Training – In support of this new office, Blackstone is developing a comprehensive training approach that can be tailored based upon the level of experience of customer audiences and the type of application service. To verify the impact of training, Blackstone’s approach captures system measures related to system usage before and after the training. These results are regularly analyzed to support continuous tailoring and improvement of training material and delivery mechanisms.

WHAT CAN SHAREPOINT DO?
Microsoft SharePoint offers a multitude of integrated capabilities aimed at enhancing the way the people within your organization communicate and work together. SharePoint’s capabilities are generally broken down into six logical areas, with supporting the collective goal of providing degree view of organizational information at your fingertips. Read more here

BLACKSTONE’S BUSINESS PROCESS ENHANCEMENT
Blackstone’s Business Process Enhancement offering optimizes client business processes to better drive productivity and quantifiable results towards the objectives that these processes aim to serve. Our approach creates a clear framework for impact analysis, requirements management, performance management, and activity monitoring. Blackstone’s Business Process Enhancement (BPE) expertise is based on Blackstone’s Think-Build-Deploy™ methodology and industry best practices such at ITIL ITSM® and Object Management. Read more here

Background

In order to prepare and protect our warfighters, the U.S. Government conducts intelligence, security and information operations for military commanders and national decision-makers.  This mission involves the collecting, processing, and disseminating of a large amount of intelligence information in a variety of intelligence disciplines.  It also conducts a wide range of production activities, ranging from intelligence preparation for the battlefield to situation development, signal intelligence analysis, imagery exploitation and science and technology production.

The Challenge

In order to more effectively manage and coordinate the wide range of activities and flow of information associated with its mission, the Government initiated a central Portal to implement a flexible and secure web-based collaboration tool to promote better communication and research effectiveness among its information managers supporting its warfighters.   Blackstone was called upon to utilize our extensive experience in integration, portal development and information sharing to deliver a streamlined solution that would enable a significant amount of information to be shared and accessed easily and in a user-friendly manner from a single web-based location.

Performance

In order to provide the Government with a sophisticated solution, Blackstone launched a Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server in an accredited, secure area and developed a phased plan to increase the functionality at the desktop level across all user locations.  The following are Blackstone’s project milestones:

• Implemented a customer oriented web portal solution that supports user configuration and personalization
• Established a flexible portal framework for implementing additional services over multiple phases
• Integrated the solution with Microsoft SharePoint server
• Provided a user-friendly tab-based, file folder interface that facilitates easy navigation between pages
• Provided document and report templates to support consistency across the organization
• Implemented a secure, 128-bit encryption of all data transmitted to/from the site
• Enabled on-demand, 27/7 access to all user sites

Results

Blackstone established a one stop shop for managing all logistics information to an integral compartment of the military.  The portal now plays a vital role in providing the Government with the ability to make informed decisions, share information, collaborate on documentation, conduct staffing actions, perform contract tasking, conduct remote training, accomplish remote mission troubleshooting and coordinating mission planning.

Blackstone first began to work with our Client’s sales leadership to document the current business needs, pain points, and areas of desired improvement for managing the existing deal landscape. Out of these sessions came a formal business-specific requirements document around which the CRM solution was to be designed. Along with this, Blackstone conducted some in-depth meetings with the Client IT leadership to understand the associated IT requirements which would have to be met in order to make a CRM implementation work within our Client’s IT environment. The five main requirements that became key drivers to the CRM solution were as follows:
*Centralize all account, contact, deal data on one platform accessible via the web.
*Enable shared visibility into deal activity including the ability to assign tasks to one another related to specific deals.
*Enable rich executive reporting that would allow real-time visibility into the pipeline health and performance over a variety of customize-able time metrics.
*Deploy a CRM solution compatible with Microsoft Outlook including email, calendared tasks.
*Deploy a Software-as-Service (SaaS) solution that would limit impact Client’s current IT assists and required Client IT resource support. Read more here