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With a small, overworked IT staff, SMBs can't expect to have experts in every important area. Limited resources require business owners to work with external vendors to integrate and support particular technologies. The challenge is to find the right vendor and develop a relationship that augments and complements the efforts of your in-house staff.
The following excerpt from Charles Nault's book, "Risk Free Technology," is presented by bMighty courtesy of Global Professional Publishing. In this book, Nault speaks to non-technical managers, executives, and directors about how they can better understand and promote an IT infrastructure that will support business objectives.
Don't Miss: Risk Free Technology: The Problem
No one can know everything. Your IT folks will have specific areas of expertise as we discussed in the last chapter. You can't afford to keep on staff all the people with all the expertise in each particular technology that forms your total solution. But a solution designed by one person is most likely to be less effective than it could be. The level of knowledge and experience required to integrate technology effectively is extensive regardless of the size of your company. I have yet to encounter a company that has unlimited resources. It is specifically the limit of your resources that requires you to work with a company or companies you can trust to provide the information and advice you need, and to provide competent people to augment your existing staff.
I want to be clear that I am not talking about a vendor who provides a single product and helps to integrate their product into your network. You made need that at times. I am advocating a long term partnership with a company that provides a number of the solutions you need, and is competent and trustworthy enough to be the focal point for all of your projects, even if they have to partner with other firms to provide the entire solution. More about that further down. One very valuable resource that smaller companies don't employ, and many larger ones do, is a Technology Council. It sounds technical, but actually the majority of participants on the council should be from other areas besides IT. We used a very similar model to drive decisions regarding the technologies that we invested in and it has proven to be the very heart of our success. We formed a customer advisory board, comprised of a good cross section of our customers, who participated in very open and honest discussions regarding the technologies, services, and delivery mechanisms that our company needed to be proficient in to best serve their needs. Our success rate in introducing new technologies and new services improved dramatically.
That is exactly what you want your technology council to be and do. It should be a cross section of the people who use the technologies that are required to operate your business every day. The council should advise senior management and IT on a regular basis. It is pretty easy to get people to open up about what technologies will help them do their job better. You can get honest feedback on how your current network and IT staff are performing. Lead the discussion in a positive, effective, and productive manner and you will learn a lot. You may invite customers to participate in the discussion if they rely on your IT in order to work with you on a regular basis. You should also invite the trusted advisor for IT that you have selected after you follow the guidelines later in this chapter. There is so much going on in technology and it is easy to get wowed by new stuff. Focus is critical. Your technology council will help to keep your focus in the right places.
I recently read an interesting book called Freakonomics. One particular point they make has to do with knowledge, and the effective transfer of knowledge. The main theme of the second chapter was asymmetrical communication. They concluded that most businesses gain great advantage through the hoarding of information, which they cleverly dole out to their clients for large fees. They point to real estate agents (in a particularly unflattering way I might add) and insurance agents. The examples used in the book; real estate and insurance, are not anywhere near as complex as the business of running the IT systems that businesses need. I point this out to say that the cost of technology integration performed by the right people at the right time in the right way is actually a tremendous value, has far more daily impact on your business, and will heavily affect the bottom line. Inside companies I have often seen this hoarding of information used by technicians under the guise of job security. While the cost of technology is high, information regarding which technologies will help you, and which ones will not, is a major part of the value equation when engaging a trusted advisor and in forming your Technology Council. Still you are skeptical
At a recent conference I attended, the speaker from a research firm in New York called AMI Partners indicated that one of the major inhibitors to relationships between your business and a value added partner is a lack of trust. You believe that giving up control or management of any part of your Information Technology solution is risky and that you can do it more economically in-house. You are right in both regards. There is risk in going outside of your company. If your staff has a lot of knowledge and experience in a particular area of technology, implementing the solution will be cheaper using your staff. To have your staff support it is another story. That will cost you more in-house. Part of the fear is actually based on past experiences. Part of it is just the incredible resistance to change discussed in Change or Die. Listen, there are approximately 239,000 solution providers in the US alone. Just because you've had a bad experience, or even a couple of bad experiences, doesn't mean there are not partners out there that you can trust. It simply means that you have to take a more active role in investigating who you partner with to find just the right fit. Just as you damage your business every time you make a bad hire—and bad hires are your fault—you really damage your business when you choose a bad outside partner. You need a partner, and you must find the perfect partner for your business. Once you do, it must truly be a partnership.
IT systems integrators have a lot of knowledge that you don't have. IT is a knowledge-based business. The technology changes so quickly that unless you are in the technology business specifically, you cannot possibly stay abreast of what is best for your company. However, an integrator is only going to know what new technologies are right for your business if they know your business, and your network, inside out. This comes with time. The time it takes can be shortened by participation on your technology council. It can also be shortened if, once you choose a trusted partner, you hire them to do a complete assessment of what you have, the documentation you have, and the processes in place for implementations, change management, security, and support.
There is no doubt that a technician who spends every day integrating solutions into other companies' networks (as network integrators do) is eventually going to get good enough to integrate that solution into pretty much any environment. It does become as much an art as a science. Still, he is at a distinct disadvantage if he has never seen your network prior to this implementation. To be sure, there is always a first time, but if every time a technician installs a new solution on your network it is the first time, the chances of success are severely diminished.
Side note: I use "he" and "his" only because there are an overwhelming majority of technicians who are male. Our company has sponsored and participated in many events to encourage, highlight, and support women in technology. Ladies, technology is a great field, it pays well, and your intellect will be highly respected. Ask any women who is in it "my experience is that they seem to generally be the happiest technicians!
I have found, over the years, two opposite types of customer who have employed my company and other network integrators. The first are those who trust no-one but themselves, insist on hiring the lowest bidder, treat their integrator as an adversary who is trying to take advantage of them, and then try to take advantage of the integrator as often as possible. Interestingly, organizations with this attitude regularly hire high-priced consulting firms. That still confuses me, but I dare not speculate as to why that is.
The second are those who consider the integrator a trusted partner, establish a long term relationship, and treat them as a true partner. In twenty years I have never once seen the first type of client thrive. Even if their company somehow manages to do well despite their IT department, these types of companies have constant problems, incredible turnover, and everyone in the IT community eventually catches on to their mode of operation, so that only the least qualified and experienced vendors bid on their project, usually then end up losing money, and vow never to deal with them again. You'd think they might catch on to their own folly. Not true. I can count on one hand the number of such clients who eventually turned around, saw the light, and began to do things right. When they have, however, the transformation has been dramatic.
Courtesy of Global Professional Publishing, © Copyright Charles L. Nault 2009