Stage 1 - Managing IT for the non-technical manager - Basic Infrastructure

Many business owners are frustrated that their computers don't just run. Everybody tells them that they need to become more technical. Everybody that tells you that is wrong. You don't need to be more technical. You need to understand how to manage Information Technology so that it supports your business.

The first stage of managing IT is the basic infrastructure. Before getting any value from IT, you have to buy hardware and software. This doesn't do anything for you except give you access to tools that will help you run your business. Managing IT at this level means that it has to work.

Those who are uncomfortable with technology, or just don't want to spend their time there, tend to ignore it, or "delegate" it to some junior technician in their business. Typically this person is technical, is comfortable with playing in technology and will find a way to fix problems that come up.

What they won't do is manage the reliability of the technology, because they don't have the experience to do that. You will get a reactive situation. Problems will occur, and your staff will be unproductive during those times. The bigger problem will be that you don't know what is lurking. Since the technology is not being managed, you won't see a problem until it occurs. Then it will likely have a significant impact on your business. A client of mine recently experienced a 3 day outage due to a minor problem with the server. It took 3 days to diagnose and fix. During that time, their activity didn't stop, but the business processes did. They couldn't invoice and it took weeks to catch up.

Trying to hire someone to support IT in your business is a real challenge. You can't pay high salaries, so you get a junior person. Hiring a senior at a high salary doesn't work either. They just get bored and leave.

Contracting with an outside supplier seems to be a good solution. If you "delegate" the support to the outside supplier, you may be somewhat better off. You no longer have to worry about hiring, training, etc. But if that's all you do, you will not gain much benefit unless your supplier is managing IT for you and not just reacting the way that your staff did. And unless you have defined the goals that they are managing to, you still may be subject to failures that could have been prevented. (the client mentioned earlier had outsourced IT support).

You need to set goals for your supplier, that leaves you in control, but lets them manage the support on a day-to-day basis. Each business will have a unique set of targets, but the goals will fall into the following categories:

1. Asset management: What hardware, software and other components do you have? What did they cost you? Are they up-to-date? Are they properly licensed? Upgrades are often required to software. Some of these drive hardware upgrades. If you have this available, it will cost you less to get an assessment of future upgrades and may also prevent problems, or ease recovery from major problems.
2. Risk management: This includes anti-virus, security, non-business use. This area is the source of many problems. If managed properly, you can prevent problems from occurring, or at least identify them more quickly, speeding up recovery.
3. Backup management: Do you have backup? Does it work? How would you recover from a failure? Many businesses have difficulty focusing in this area, because of day-to-day pressures. You can define the needs once and have your supplier commit to this area on a day-to-day basis.
4. Reliability management: Do you track service incidents? Does your supplier? What is the business impact? What can be done to prevent these incidents? An analysis of these inciedents will identify actions that should be taken in one of the other areas.

Setting up these management processes, a one time event, will mean that what you spend on software to run your business will have the opportunity to provide the return on investment that you were looking for.

It will also reduce your frustrations, and provide you with the feeling that you are in control, not just subject to the whims of computers or computer technicians.

This first stage is the foundation. If your technology infrastructure is not stable, the only thing taht you will accomplish by putting in more software is to increase your frustrations and opportunity to be affected by failures.

Does technology frustrate you?

I just read a blog by George Zgourides, a clinical Psychologist titles Dont Let Technology Psych You Out! In it he talks about people who get frustrated with computers or anything else that frustrates them in their day to day work. It's kind of long, but at least worth checking out.

I see this problem all the time when I work with clients. In many cases they aren't comfortable with technology and use it grudgingly. This sets them up for frustration. Software fails. Get used to it! Software wasn't written for people, it was written by software programmers for software programmers! We get frustrated because it's too complex and doesn't just help you to do the job.

I've spent my whole career in technology. I've been a programmer, an analyst, a designer and I still get frustrated. I normally use a very small portion of a software product, but have to deal with all its features every day.

The key to minimizing that frustration is to focus on what you are trying to achieve and set yourself up to do that very well. I see the problem in every assignment. A business buys new software. The software supplier comes in and trains them on everything the software can do. People remember very little of this content, because it has no context. How do I do what I want to do? The software supplier doesn't know your business, so he can't tailor the training to your business. He can't spend the time to leaarn your business, because you won't spend the consulting fees to let him do it. If he's a software programmer, it may not help anyway.

The key to reducing this frustration is to get somebody who will manage the technology for you (Outsource it!). If you get somebody proactive, they will prevent problems and allow you to focus on your business. Then focus on your business process. Find out how to do what you are tryoing to do by using the software. Often the supplier will tell you that can't be done! Bull! They reason that they say this is that they don't understand what you are trying to do.

I encounter this all the time. With my experience as a programmer, I know what can be done. I also focus on the business process and look at other mechanisms which might give us an equivalent solution. I have found that knowledge is not the most imporatnt thing. Persistence is. I believe that when somebody can't make me underswtand, they have a problem. It's not my lack of knowledge, but theirs.

Focus, and will are the keys to eliminate frustration.