Recently I was reading an interesting article called Outsourcing: 10 Crippling Mistakes IT Departments Make and found myself scratching my head. At first, I was unsure why – all 10 things they point out are definitely key issues that can seriously harm or cripple your outsourcing plans.  All of their mistakes have a very common theme, that’s see all too often:  Companies don’t treat outsourcing like getting married.

When outsourcing, you’re building a long-term relationship with a company that will be looking after computer systems (or some subset of them), protecting your data, or helping your users.  When rereading the article with the mindset of getting married (or creating a partnership) instead of buying a commodity from a vendor, most people say to themselves, “Of course you wouldn’t do ‘Penny Wise, Pound Foolish’.”

For small to mid-sized businesses thinking about outsourcing, the requirements and “crippling mistakes” are quite different.  Most SMBs don’t have strong IT metrics (there’s some basics that everyone should have) or focus heavily on incentive-based contracts. Instead, there’s a need to focus on the basics.   Read the rest of this entry »

I’m working with an IT team to help each of them develop their professional development plans.  For most of the team, it’s really easy.  Help desk, server admins and network guys have clear technical course work and simple-to-acheive certifications to collect along the way.  It’s a path with many rewards and almost-instant gratification along the way. 

Plus, for more technical people, learning about new technology is fun!  Even better when the company pays for it.

It becomes somewhat more challenging when you start to look at the new IT Manager who leads the group.  In the past, he’s been focused on Cisco certification and his ITIL base certification.  Great – but as he’s having to get more hands-off technology, it’s time to move away from Cisco.  Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been reviewing help desk products for a client the past couple weeks and it (continues to) surprise me that vendors don’t recognize a difference between asset management and license management.  A couple years ago, when evaluating MSP software, I went through the same frustration (and pulled lots of hair out). 

Most help desk products focus solely on asset management.  They claim they manage software as well, but what they’re really doing is listing what software is installed on a computer, not what’s licensed for the computer. That’s only half of the job.  When it comes time to self-assessment of computers (you should be spot-checking/auditing on a regular basis) or when Microsoft comes a’knocking, you need record of what’s in use (installed) and what you legally own.  Read the rest of this entry »

The IT department is in chaos. There’s so much to do that it doesn’t seem like anyone is getting anything done, much less staying ahead. Balls are being dropped and nobody is showing leadership to the company. 

Welcome to the sad state of many IT departments around the world. All of your time is spent thrashing on day-to-day tasks, rarely even with the opportunity to look up, much less look ahead. 

Transitioning from firefighting mode to proactive support and planning is a big jump for any IT department.  In a perfect world, you could make this jump in one big leap – change everything now and start working in an all new way – but that’s not realistic. Changing from reactive to proactive, and no plan to short and long term planning is a major cultural change for both IT and the departments it services.  It takes time. 

Thankfully improvement like this is a process, not a destination.  That means we can take it in steps.  Read the rest of this entry »

Imagine you’re going on a road trip.  So you go out and buy a car, load it up with stuff, and head east.  Fantastic!

Some of us enjoy a simple vacation this way.  I did that once (I ended up in Disneyland, but that’s another story) a few years back and had a great time. For most people, many important questions pop up.  Where are you headed?  How are you going to get there? Did you pack the right supplies?  In this case, let’s hope that you don’t live on the east coast … Read the rest of this entry »