Our second car is now 16 years old, the maintenance bills are mounting, it doesn’t have bluetooth, but it does for us. Is your IT strategy built on a similar logic?
Organisations with an IT spend of less than $1m pa often do not employ specialist managers. Instead they opt for an outsourced model reporting into HR, Finance or Corporate Services. It’s not perfect, but it does for them. People complain about IT, but don’t we all. How bad do things need to get before you decide to fix things?
Here are 4 indicators that your IT maybe holding back your organisation:
1. Where are your canaries in the coal mine?
Of course Dorothy the CEO’s secretary has you on speed dial whenever there is a problem. But what about Michael in Wop Wop? We spoke to him and he said “I come in at 8:30am and sometimes it’s not working til 10”. That’s his reality, he’s used to it, he doesn’t complain.
Who knows about the knock on revenue leakage and productivity shortfall? And that’s just in Wop Wop… multiply that across all the sites.
2. What’s the ownership : blame ratio?
Good people usually know what’s happening and why. Average people become victims. Great people take ownership. What are people saying?
We spoke to the IT team, they were proud of their work but complained about the supplier. We spoke to the supplier and they complained about the customer. Zero ownership has significant business consequences.
3. How standardised is your operating environment?
Do you have a ‘Standard Operating Environment’? We ran some diagnostics and identified 10 different versions of Windows, 3 of which are no longer supported. This is great if you are in the ‘fix-it’ business, but not if you want a reliable, efficient and cost effective operation.
4. When was the last time you reviewed your IT?
If you haven’t looked at it for 3 years then you are possibly missing opportunities. We had a prod around and found an overloaded network, outdated design and extremely uncompetitive pricing.