IT as whiners: The great debate

210058 Resource 102363 102466 102466 1217365759759 1217419269741 Controlled Nation of "IT" Whiners?

When IT isn't whining, we are whining about IT.

Couple of weeks ago Senator Phil Gramm took a drubbing in the press for stating during an interview about the economy that America has become a "nation of whiners."  He then resigned from the McCain campaign, as a result of the 'controversy'. So it is with some trepidation that I enter the fray on fellow Enterprise Irregular Larry Dignan's post about <a href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/wp-trackback.php?p=9472">"IT as Whiners."</a> But this is an interesting take on an old and onging debate and I thought that the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) who read my posts would do well to take a look at this and give it some thought. In order to make themselves more relevant and to blunt some of the criticism that they regularly receive from their corporate colleagues, IT departments have long striven for 'business alignment.'  Dignan is happy to see this go because it creates an illusion that IT is some entity outside of and at odds with the business. This is and always has been nonsense. IT is as much a part of the business as finance or sales.The other point is that IT resources need to make sure that they are not 'commodities.' They have to make sure that they are forging strong relationships with users and adding value that is greater than the sum of the code they write. So how do large companies with IT departments get themselves to the point where they have to re-align IT with the business and their well paid resources are commodities? How do you avoid these traps?It may sound self-serving as a NetSuite implementation consultant to answer these questions thus, but this is, in all honesty, my best answer: IT resources and systems that are not serving the goals and objectives of your business, costing you cash while taking up space, are the result of management that does not take IT seriously, as necessary and importatant as Sales and A/R. This lack of seriousness catches up with every organization and eventually overwhelms them. I am not making this claim frivolously, consider the following: Each year management sits down with the budget and forecasts business growth. They prepare the business for growth and make sure that they have the facilities and resources they need to get to the next level. But think about your IT decisions, now. Did you look at your growth plans and think about an IT system for 3 years from now when your $500,000 business was $2,000,000? Or did you purchase for today's business and hope like hell you can scale up and get away with it?If you are like 80% of the SMEs that I talk to daily you will purchase the software you can get away with, not the software you need to grow. Why? Because software is an expense and minimizing it keeps the bottom line growing. This is the rub. Software does not enable the bottom line to grow, in your estimation, it just sucks up cash. Limit IT spend and grow profits.Sales people are also expensive, but normally we don't jettison sales staff if they are helping the business to grow. So does IT help the business to grow? Consider:<ul><li>How do sales breakdown by product or service line?</li><li>What products or services are profitable?</li><li>How long does it take from a lead's first inquiry to a sale?</li><li>What is the cost of sale in human resources?</li><li>How many of these questions can I write in an hour?</li></ul>So ok, you have the answers to these, right? I have seen the spreadsheets many times over. Tons of data and good information painstakingly compiled and buried on someone's hard drive. It should be on your dashboard every morning when you log into your system. How many hours of daylight do you spend putting all of this together everyday? Every week? Every month? This is cheaper though than software that can really help you run your business from lead to cash?I keep my eyes and ears open to stories like this one about IT as Whiners because I want SMEs to understand that they are not alone out there. Large corporations are every bit, perhaps even more likely, to make some of the same mistakes that you and I make in our small businesses. Fortunately the business press tends to cover the big boys more than us. I know a lot of you are eating some big companies lunch today, taking away some piece of their business while they're all in Vegas celebrating the sales team's lackluster performance last year. Good for you. But keep in mind that if you want to continue eating well at their expense, start planning for the next bigger bites and make sure you have systems that can digest them.  9 application/xml IT costs IT Spend netsuite consulting small and medium enterprises SME IT as whiners: The great debate Who's whining, IT or the Business? http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=9472 false Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; YPC 3.2.0; .NET CLR 1.0.3705; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; Media Center PC 4.0; .NET CLR 2.0.50727) 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 tfoydel 75.46.13.146 false true false false true 205861 false false true false false false true 102363 blog blogsite/SightLines/web