You’re probably burning out your corporate IT folks. With the pace of change and innovation increasing and the organizational demands on IT growing, there are still only 40-60 hours per week to get stuff done. The vast majority of IT’s time is spent keeping the lights on. The precious remainder is spent on a crumb of R & D or training to keep up. Never mind about taking a proper vacation. Unless there is a change in the laws of physics or a major increase in IT budgets (HaHa) … something has to change. In progressive organizations, it has already started. The first lesson is realizing that getting external help to look after your IT systems isn’t about replacing anyone.
Change always requires some heavy lifting and initial investment. But, done right, re-thinking your IT will net more than just keeping IT folks off the ledge and preventing stress leave. Your organization can flourish. Here’s the thing: the burden of upgrading and managing your IT infrastructure needs to be shared or offloaded completely. I submit that accounting sub-ledgers need to be modified and costs need to be shuffled. If you call it ‘outsourcing’ I call you a ‘dinosaur.’ You will NOT be laying off your IT folks and paying another company to run your IT. That never works.
Before we started IT Weapons, Jay and I got ‘outsourced.’ And we saw the consequences first-hand. We have always understood that it can’t work because the outsourcing company has no idea how your business flows, who’s who, or what makes your organization unique. They probably say they do … but words and facts don’t always line up. Any MSP or VAR out there who purports to replace your whole IT team is selling you snake oil.
My suggestion is to draw a line within your IT department; delineating priorities and opportunities between business demand and IT execution. Maybe your IT folks should be renamed to Business Analysts. The idea is to start changing the perspective and interpretation of IT’s role in the organization. Today’s effective IT pros must become experts in listening to your various lines of business and stakeholders. They must be able to identify technology ‘gaps’ and turn that data into specifications and the relevant KPIs to track the success of new tech implementations. Armed with that understanding of the genuine business needs, they can engage an outside IT partner and establish a strategic cooperative relationship where projects and back-end private cloud infrastructure are managed by the partner, but answerable to the internal IT staff. If you’re still thinking of this as ‘outsourcing’, you’re missing the point. You’re not evolving.
This is the same evolutionary path followed by hydroelectric power infrastructure in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Economies of scale, standardization, and efficiency were all gained by everyone involved as organizations and regions centralized on what has become today’s shared power grid. The same is going to happen with the back-end plumbing of your organization – and your internal IT folks need to be part of that evolution. Just as today it’s ridiculous to think that you should have a manager of electricity at your business – pretty soon it will be anachronistic to have a computing resource administrator.
Your brilliant tech folks need to be part of the business not part of the plumbing. IT will be a valuable piece of your business arsenal – a cherished member at the boardroom table and not ‘overhead’ or a ‘cost centre’. Change your thinking … Don’t ‘outsource’ anyone … liberate your smart people, and they will help your business flourish.
Ted Garner is the CEO of IT Weapons Inc., a Brampton, Ont.-based solution provider and multiple CDN Channel Elite Awards winner. He blogs at Ted’s Blog and tweets as@ITWepon1.
I couldn’t disagree more. I can cite countless examples of where we have replaced IT staff that had an unbelievable sense of entitlement and brought almost nothing to the table other than the antiquated notion of “Yeah, sorry. I know you need to do that to run your business, but it doesn’t jive with how I want to run the IT department.” Seen it more times than I care to recall.
Proper outsourcing of IT services (true Managed Services) demands that the provider understand very clearly the goals and visions of the business. How can you possibly support their information technology if you don’t know how or why they use it?
With all due respect, I don’t know how IT Weapons describes managed services but from the tone of the article, I would have to say they missed the target.
https://syncronet.net
We’ve all run into those kinds of useless in-house staff that are practically begging to be outsourced, but what Ted is clearly saying is that outsourcing the day-to-day IT support or special projects doesn’t mean that the company *has* to lay people off. In fact, it can be an opportunity to put the excellent ones in effective roles.
OF COURSE the outside firm needs to understand and work toward the vision and goals of the company. I just don’t think that’s the topic of the column.
http://www.bulletproofIT.ca
Sorry, I respectfully disagree. The article clearly states that MSP’s and VAR’s have no idea of the biz flow or goals or unique differentiation etc. It doesn’t say “some unscrupulous MSPs will trick you into believing they understand your business:. I quote:
“Before we started IT Weapons, Jay and I got ‘outsourced.’ And we saw the consequences first-hand. We have always understood that it can’t work because the outsourcing company has no idea how your business flows, who’s who, or what makes your organization unique. They probably say they do … but words and facts don’t always line up. Any MSP or VAR out there who purports to replace your whole IT team is selling you snake oil.”
IMHO, this unfairly tars all MSP’s with the same brush. Some, not all, MSPs have very little understanding of their clients’ business but those are not true MSPs. They are VARs who are jumping on the MSP bandwagon. Our own unique differentiator is that we actually do take the time to understand very clearly the needs and goals etc of the business.
Interestingly enough, the author makes my point for me. He talks about economy of scale. This is where MSPs really make hay. An organization can take advantage of a much larger (and consequently multi-talented) team offered up by an MSP. Instead of a small internal team, your much larger (multi-talented) team adds greater coverage that would otherwise be impossible to have.
Not sure the article should have been titled “Why you shouldn’t call it outsourcing” but maybe “How to avoid being fleeced by incompetent MSP’s in disguise.”
Mr. Butler, sorry you misunderstood the point of
the piece. If you’d like to better understand the IT Weapons approach to
Enterprise Managed Services, feel free to visit our office sometime and we can show you. Otherwise, we’ll see you at the CDN Awards. Take care.