In the last couple months I’ve been dealing with a number of projects where moving to a Software-as-a-Service solution was an option.  With SaaS solutions, it’s very important to do a proper analysis of the technical, financial and risks for solutions.

While most SaaS solutions claim to be significantly cheaper than their on-premise solutions, doing a full analysis over the life of the product might surprise you.  For commodity services such as email, it’s often safe to assume the hosted solution will be cheaper.  For specialty products, this changes significantly.  At first it may look cheaper, but be sure to look deeper. (more…)

Over the last several months I’ve been spending time working with a client’s finance department on process improvement.  While their headcount is quite small, their finance and accounting there is complex – they’re a multi-national public (SOX applies) company managing several very major projects (think $10-100 million each).

Our focus was to reduce the monkey-work and improve audit-ability and reporting in the accounting department so they can be focused on high-value work.  Would you believe Excel is one of the best tools for doing this?  (more…)

Technology can be a disruptor or accelerator for businesses.

When IT processes are immature and systems not stable, IT is a cost center; distracting and disrupting the business. Working properly, IT is transparent and works like a utility; it’s there working for you when you need it.

Only then can IT become the foundation required to greatly increase productivity, drive innovation, and become a competitive advantage to the business.

Small and medium-sized businesses often underestimate the strategic importance of investment in information technology. Most companies have a sales or marketing strategy, but neglect creating an IT strategy. A well thought out IT strategy helps align your IT spending with your company’s requirements and will develop it from a cost center into returns for the company. (more…)

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.   (more…)