IT Services
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Reliable and efficient IT Services are integral to most industry sectors ranging from manufacturing, finance, aviation, engineering, wholesale and distribution – you name it, most businesses rely on dependable IT support solutions to operate effectively.
Typically these businesses would rely on computing systems for somewhere between 20 to 50 staff members, and Information Technology typically plays an “enabling” role. That is...by having IT services in place, the organisation can achieve more with fewer staff, whilst simultaneously improving quality.
So as a business owner you need to ask “What is it that your business needs from its IT services?” Although the specific answers vary from business to business, there are some underlying trends in what business owners are looking for...
- Priority 1: IT services that just work... reliably and fast
- Priority 2: An IT Services company that responds quickly when something does go wrong
- Priority 3: An IT Services company that understands the business and has the capabilities to help the business operate more efficiently and improve profits
These answers make perfect sense. However you’d be surprised that despite being in business for many years and being ‘looked after’ by their current and past IT Services providers, many businesses are still not being provided adequate IT solutions.
It seems that for all the improvements in technology business leaders are still looking for the same fundamental services from their IT Services...and IT Consultancies are struggling to deliver them.
When these 3 fundamental needs are not being met, business leaders are faced with having to change their IT Services company - which is a decision never taken lightly, as it is costly and may require a leap of faith that the new IT Services company, will actually perform better than the existing IT Services provider.
Why Business Leaders Change their IT Services Company
Let’s look at what many business leaders are experiencing that leads them to want to change their IT Services company. The top responses from business leaders are:
- Reason 1: “We spend massive amounts on IT Services infrastructure only to be struck down by a critical failure that costs thousands in lost productivity and repairs”.
This feedback related directly to Priority 1: “IT Support Systems that just Work”
- Reason 2: Whilst we have IT Services the IT Consultant is not “proactive”.
This reason is a little more abstract, however when we dig a little deeper business leaders explain that they will change from their IT Services company if technicians are difficult to get hold of, don’t respond in a timely manner, are unable to communicate in simple plain English, or cannot get to the bottom of technical issues - and end up applying band aid fixes rather than long term IT support solutions.
There is a second element to the feedback of the IT Services company not being proactive that relates directly to business leaders need to deal with an IT Consultant who understands their business. A business leader will also change their IT Consultants for not being proactive if:
- There is no IT Services support plan to reduce the number of problems that do occur, or to mature the performance of their systems
- There is no link to improve business processes or ideas as to how to work more efficiently
- Their staff spend valuable time managing the IT Services support partner, or following up IT Support issues
Why many IT Services firms struggle to be proactive
It seems that many IT Services firms can respond quickly when something goes wrong but really struggle to delivery IT Support systems that ‘just work’ - and, be truly ‘proactive’ for their clients.
From our observations there seems to be two fundamental drivers behind why many IT Services firms struggle to really deliver.
The first...
80% of IT Services companies provide for small and medium business turnover less than $1M, and have fewer than 4 staff members. For these IT Consultants their core business is network maintenance, managed services and network support. Rarely do they have the time to focus on proactive IT services for their clients such as Business Process Improvement, or the time to develop the capabilities to deliver these IT services. Typically they focus on network maintenance, network monitoring, responding to support enquiries and completing projects when client’s hardware is getting old and posing a risk to the business.
These organisations focus on keeping their engineers ‘billable time’ as high as possible - and if they are a managed services consultant, growing their fixed price services such as network monitoring and network maintenance. With a focus on billable time for engineering staff it is difficult for many IT consultants of this size to be truly ‘proactive’ and to develop a structured approach to helping their clients develop an ‘IT Strategy’; or to spend time generating more efficient practices to enable their clients to work smarter.
In addition, if the focus of a smaller IT Services company is to maximise billable time, engineer response times increase, engineers can be harder to get hold of and ‘band aid’ fixes get applied as the engineer is under pressure to get to the next job.
The second...
There is often not a common language between a business owner and the IT Services Consultant, which often results in outcomes that are not aligned with the real world problems business owners are looking to solve. Many business owners can relate to statements like “I don’t understand IT Services well enough to manage it in detail and my IT Services consultant doesn't seem to understand the very real business problems I face.
So what can you to improve your IT Services?
Here’s a story to illustrate it for you...
Meet Paul.
Paul is the General Manager of a property development business that employees 80 people. 40 of his staff members require computers to fulfil their job functions. IT Services are used throughout the business to support marketing and sales efforts, property design services, accounting and job costs and provide e-mail and access to the Internet.
Paul gets on well with the IT Services company that looks after his computers however lately he has noticed that his staff are becoming frustrated at the number of IT Support problems that are occurring and feels that the current IT Services company doesn’t really ‘take ownership’ of the IT problems, or understand the impact the IT problems have on the ability to work.
Paul is also concerned that there is no cohesive IT Strategy in place. His IT Services Consultant seems to be able to recommend new servers, and explain why he should upgrade to the latest version of Microsoft Office. However what Pauls really wants is an IT Strategy Plan on how he can streamline operations, improve efficiencies, or reduce IT Support costs.
Paul has an IT Services budget of $60,000.
How should Paul spend his IT Services budget?
We’d recommend Paul take the following approach.
Engage an IT Services Consultancy who is industry certified and has greater than 4 staff members and look to take the following approach.
1) Paul should look to put in place an IT support program to keep his IT services performing optimally. A decent IT Support Program will include a Managed Service component that includes fixed price network maintenance, network monitoring or critical systems and functions such as Antivirus protection, firewall protection, and server functions. The IT Support program should also provide Paul with an “IT Services Manager”, not somebody that comes out twice a year for an “account management” meeting but somebody whose role it is to liaise with Paul to drive through IT Support initiatives above and beyond “network maintenance and network support” services.
2) Paul should look to develop an IT Strategy plan for the next 12 months to improve the performance of his systems, reduce his IT Support Costs, and mitigate any existing IT risks to the business. Paul will be able to achieve this through by having his IT Services company:
a. Review his IT Services to identify where performance can be improved and cost out these initiatives.
b. Look at trends of underlying problems and coming up with ideas on how to solve them. If 90% of his IT support costs are related to say “email” problems... then the IT Services consultant needs to look at why. Perhaps Pauls needs to provide training to his staff, or the underlying system is inadequate, or not setup according to best practice.
c. Review the design of the computer network to ensure it is the most cost effective way of delivering applications to Paul’s staff. At the end of the day it is the applications Paul’s staff are using that drives efficiencies. There are many ways to deploy applications, and depending on the chosen delivery method, IT Support costs will vary. For example. E-mail can be delivered with a local “Microsoft Exchange “ server at Paul’s premises, or it can be hosted by an IT partner or Microsoft, where Paul will receive the same functionality as having a local server, without the overhead of paying the IT Services Consultant to maintain the server.
3) Paul should meet with his management team to identify the top 3 most inefficient processes within his business. Paul can easily identify these inefficiencies by asking his management team the following questions:
a. Do we have problems with multiple users wanting to share spreadsheets?
b. Do we have two or more systems that we would like to talk to each other?
c. What services do we provide that is slightly different each time?
d. Are we constantly communicating with suppliers or customers?
e. Is there a particular work function that we feel could run more smoothly?
Paul can then meet with his IT Services Consultant and dovetail into his 12 month IT Strategy with the process improvement he wishes to undertake.
What results will Paul achieve with this approach?
- By putting in place an IT support program that includes managed services Paul’s IT systems will continue to perform well and ensure his staff are productive
- By having an “IT Services Manager” in place through the IT support program Paul will reduce the amount of time his staff spend managing IT issues
- By identifying what aspects of his IT services can be matured, Paul will have fewer ongoing problems and reduce the risk of IT problems impacting his business. Hence Paul’s IT Support costs will decrease over the coming 12 months
- By focusing on the top 3 efficiency improvements Paul will be able to achieve more with less staff, adding to his bottom line
The overall effect is in the following year Paul will have increased the return to his business, and have the choice to increase his IT Services budget to tackle larger process deficiencies, to allocate the increased profits to other areas of business development, or increase the return to the business owners.
This article was supplied by Human IT providers of IT Support in Melbourne, Australia. Including dedicated IT Services to small businesses, IT Support Consultants and IT Strategy.
Human IT is Australia’s only IT Services company with the ‘IT Roadmap Planner’... designed to help small business owners reduce IT Support costs, improve staff productivity and achieve better profits.
