| Checklist for Your IT Department
in a Recession
by Akarin Weatherford
Well, that's it. We are now officially in a recession.
With all this economic turbulence churning around, it's time to
start looking inside your company to find ways to save money. One
easy place to gain immediate cost savings is in Information Technology
(IT). One problem in determining what needs to get cut is that most
decision making executives do not have a full understanding of what
encompasses IT and therefore cannot effectively foresee the effects
of cost reduction decisions. If a distributor is lucky enough to
have a competent IT department head, then rest assured that he or
she will have the know-how to get you through this recession without
compromising your IT integrity. If not, then this article should
give an executive or a novice IT department head some ideas on what
to do.
Dropping the Axe
There are two basic ways to reduce cost in IT: place a moratorium
on IT purchases or reduce staffing. Each method has its own pros
and cons.
Budgets
You can drip red ink all over the IT budget, but it can cost you
more money in the long run. The number one budget item that can
come back to haunt you is software licensing. You need to stay current
with the number of purchased software licenses in your company to
avoid an unexpected sticker-shock in the future. It's too easy to
just borrow a software CDROM and install applications on multiple
computers. This is especially true in smaller companies. If you
continue to use the software without purchasing a current license
for each computer, then this is considered software piracy and could
easily amount to tens of thousands of dollars in federal fines.
Not only that, your company may build a dependency on using these
pirated copies of software. So when you eventually "come clean"
and become "legal", the bill to immediately purchase these licenses
can be enormous.
The number two budget item is software upgrades.
If we are in the "batten down the hatches mode," then we don't need
to be making great leaps and bounds in technology. We need to coast
by on what we have. Software upgrades contain new features that
improve upon the previous version of the software. Vendors will
charge you for these new features. However, if there is a critical
problem with a particular software package, then the vendor will
usually make free fixes available regardless of maintenance or warranty
agreements. So, if you are currently using a software package, then
you can probably get away without the extra bells and whistles of
an upgrade for a little while and save money by not taking that
leap to the new version. Another area of savings you will realize
by not upgrading software is on implementation and training costs.
It does take time to upgrade new software and it takes even the
most experienced users some ramp up time to return to the same productivity
levels as before the upgrade.
So how can you be sure about what to cut and what
not to cut from an IT budget? The easy way to find this answer is
to as your self this key question:
"Can the basic functions of our daily tasks
still be performed effectively without this hardware/software?"
For example, if you have been tracking the check-in/out
of corporate assets with a sign-out sheet on a clipboard, you probably
don't need to spend a few thousand dollars on that whiz-bang-barcode-XML-web
based-over bloated-asset tracking-thingy that someone saw in an
airline magazine. The basic function of tracking who checks-in/out
items is still there and it works fine ("If it ain't broke, then
don't fix it"). However, if the addition of a switch (network hardware)
to your network was planned to support ten new offices going online,
then this is a necessary expense because workers in these ten new
offices will not be able to perform their daily tasks without access
to the network.
Staffing
I'm not an HR person and I never claimed to be one. I am in essence
a tech guy who has at one point spent the Christmas holidays working
eighteen-hour days and sleeping under laboratory equipment because
of staffing reductions. So here is my two cents on the issue from
a project management point of view.
Be very careful of IT staff reductions. Expertise
is difficult to come by and can be expensive in the forms of time
and money. It takes time to learn the nuances of certain IT systems
and that knowledge is never instantaneously transferable. If you
no longer have expertise in-house, then be prepared to pay top dollar
for an IT consultant where your bill will rise proportionately to
how unique the IT system is. Your best alternative to staff reduction
is to attack the IT budget as described above and refocus the energy
of your current IT department.
Refocus IT Checklist
Refocusing the direction of the IT department is the best way keep
everyone happy and improve your business. Many IT departments are
"fly by the seat of the pants" types and overlook some of the details
in basic day-to-day operations. Here are a few tips to get IT headed
in the right direction during this recession. The best aspect is
that these steps cost next to nothing except time, and you have
everything to benefit.
Best Practices Housekeeping
There are a lot of things you should be doing, but in reality you're
really not. Performing a few little housekeeping tasks will provide
you with plenty of smooth seas for sailing.
- Create and Maintain an Asset List. There should be an asset
list that describes every piece of hardware and software owned
by the company. There should also be an associated list that
contains every set of software applications (including versions)
installed on each computer in your company. Among the many uses
for this information, a few important ones are for maintenance,
upgrade planning and software licensing verification.
- Archive Vendor Data. Warranty information for computers, copies
of software PO's, software license documentation, and original
software distribution media should all be kept in one place
and managed by the IT department. This enables IT to resolve
computer and vendor issues quickly and accurately.
- Update Documentation. In-house user manuals for custom applications
and procedures often get forgotten when a new feature or new
method for doing something is added. Update the documents from
the point of view of a new employee, so you could just drop
the document right in front of them and they would be off and
running with no questions.
- Re-organize Folder Hierarchies. Users tend to be messy with
where they leave data. When data is stored on file servers,
organized file structures soon turn into a chaotic mess and
it can become impossible to find documents. Take time to re-organize
the data out there so that the folder hierarchy makes logical
sense for the users to navigate. Perhaps also tighten down security
roles to help reduce clutter.
Use Your Applications
Your company may have the latest software application or the oldest
software application. Either way, you are probably only using between
20% to 80% of the software's capabilities.
- Investigate Features. Explore your application by clicking
around the menus to see what they can do. I've given a number
of demonstrations where, as an aside to the demo, I happened
to use a feature that I thought everyone knew existed. Yet,
I get a lot of "wow, I didn't know you could do that" responses
to what I took for granted. For example, one of the most overlooked
and powerful features in Microsoft Word is the combination of
Change Tracking with Text and Audio Comments. It's great for
collaboration on documents that require review by different
people. Did you know that existed?
- Read the Manual. Actually, don't read the manual supplied
by the vendor. Use that as a last ditch effort to figure something
out since vendor manuals read like a phone book. Go to a major
bookstore and find a nice thick book on your application, skim
through it, and pick out the most useful sections. Those books
will often have more applicable real world examples than the
vendor supplied manuals.
Improve Processes
Now that you've had the chance to figure out all these cool features
that were hidden in your application, it's time to put them to use.
This is where your expertise in your company's business processes
comes in handy.
- Use New Application Knowledge. Take a moment to examine your
internal and external business processes. Technology is the
best medicine to attack pain within your company. However, as
with all medicine, it has to be properly prescribed for the
right ailment or it will be ineffective. Look to see if any
technology tools and features you currently possess can reduce
inefficiencies with processes.
- Cross-Train IT on Processes. The best overall application-users
are usually your IT staff members. If they don't know something,
they learn it by "sink or swim" after the first time a user
calls them with a particular problem. Techies tend to take a
lot of their knowledge for granted so they never pipe up with
suggestions on how an application feature can make life easier
for users. You know the process, but they know the application
capabilities. Share that knowledge. A good thing to do is to
let your techies in on process meetings and get their opinion
on what technology you have that could be used to support or
improve the process.
Train Users
Like most companies, you may have had that one successful training
session for all users. However, since then you have lost and gained
a few new faces and the way certain things were done back then might
have changed by now. Companies can take advantage of this lull in
the economy to beef up employee's skills.
- Reaffirm What They Should Know. Start training at the beginner
level, even for those who have already been through this training
a year ago. If users see something done the right way again,
it will reinforce proper application usage. A very small percentage
of users will find this boring. It has been my experience that
even a well-versed user may find some sort of enlightenment
over a technique that they may have forgotten.
- Teach New Tricks. If the overall user sophistication is really
high, then change the motif of training to presenting "Tips
and Tricks" and make the sessions interactive. This way, users
can feed off of each other's experience.
Summary
The key point I'm trying to make is that you can improve your company
using IT without having to spend money on a whole lot of new hardware
or software. Just by refocusing the energy of IT, you will build
a company that will come out of this recession stronger than when
it went in. This general check list is enough to get you started
but by no means encompasses the money saving and value enhancing
options available to your company's specific situation. Indian River
Consulting Group offers services such as an IT Improvement Audit
that can be used to identify all areas of high-value, low-impact
improvement with action plans for technical and non-technical staff.
This audit is specifically designed to assist companies with little
to no in-house, professionally trained IT support. |
