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Casual Articles - Internal IT Departments are (almost) Dead - Long Live the Service Provider
During one interview at a Milwaukee-area construction company, I was asked “What’s the deal with marketing people anyways? Why can’t they keep a job for more than a year?”Well they can, of course, keep jobs for lengthy periods of time, but the fact remains that many marketing people do not stay very long at the same firm. While every situation is different, two popular reasons for this are that the marketing person gets frustrated and leaves or the firm gets frustrated with marketing and/or sales and lets the staff go. Either way, these issues are a cost to companies in training and recruiting, not to mention the hit their marketing plan takes every time someone new needs to resurrect it.So how do you hire a great marketing person that will want to stay at
Think of this, your company can afford you and you're not cheap. You want a car, a bonus, a travel allowance, medical benefits, 30 days holiday, 2 weeks a year training
It happens over and over in businesses every day.Within large companies, people are promoted to management positions to reward them for performance as individual contributors. After all, the compensation system limits reward options, so why not just promote them?In small businesses, the owner is getting overwhelmed with all that needs to be done. They think that hiring a manager is the solution to give them a little more balance. The hunt begins!Unless you get the RIGHT person for the position, both cases have the potential for disastrous results!You can save yourself and others a great deal of stress and angst if you take the time to be mindful enough to make an intentional decision.Here are 10 questions to consider BEFORE you select
The IT department is part of the furniture of the organisation, it has a monopoly on IT services within the company. Let's explore this a little. Having an internal monopoly is bad for all parties. Think of the employee, almost without realising it he/she has limited their exposure to technology and the application of it. Of course they have, they are only going to be implementing within this single company which, presumably, only works within a particular market sector, offering particular products. Now I'm not saying that this means people will have experience so narrow that it's worthless, but it will be narrow. What about the business itself then. They can only go to one source for advice and implementation. No option to use the RFI, RFP approach, conduct supplier interviews or perform commercial negotiations. There are no negotiations here, you have a fixed internal rate and that's the end of it.
When you work for the supplier (particularly a small one), chargeable utilisation is paramount and measured constantly. Apply this with rates and you know exactly what's going on in the bank account. Senior staff don't all have their own PA's, fixed overheads are minimised down to flowers in reception and coffee beans for the techies. If utilisation or rate decreases, there is cash burn. Eventually heads need to roll, literally out of the door, so that the company can survive.
If that isn't motivation for folk to deliver projects on time, to budget I don't know what is.
Furthermore, this is fairly good motivation to establish a good working relationship with your clients so that [a] there is repeat business and [b] you've got references and the potential for case studies. So where does all of this sit when you're an internal IT department? It doesn't. So what, I hear you say - none of this affects me in my cosy cubicle in my centralised office for my Big Brand company. Well, be careful...you might be wrong.
Think of this, your company can afford you and you're not cheap. You want a car, a bonus, a travel allowance, medical benefits, 30 days holiday, 2 weeks a year training,
Football season is just about upon us and many of us are thinking about another Super Bowl championship. One doesn’t have to be very old to remember when the Super Bowl and the New England Patriots were names that were not said in the same sentence. The Packers, Cowboys, Steelers, 49ers were champions, but New England? Yet after three titles, we have come to expect a championship every year.How did we get this way? Scott Pioli, who is the Patriots VP of Player Personnel shed the team’s secret in a recent interview. He and Coach Bill Belichick have a philosophy that they will always build a team that competes for a championship. This is not a short term philosophy of win this year and worry about next year later, but a philosophy of winning now, while always ke
When you work for the supplier (particularly a small one), chargeable utilisation is paramount and measured constantly. Apply this with rates and you know exactly what's going on in the bank account. Senior staff don't all have their own PA's, fixed overheads are minimised down to flowers in reception and coffee beans for the techies. If utilisation or rate decreases, there is cash burn. Eventually heads need to roll, literally out of the door, so that the company can survive.
If that isn't motivation for folk to deliver projects on time, to budget I don't know what is.
Furthermore, this is fairly good motivation to establish a good working relationship with your clients so that [a] there is repeat business and [b] you've got references and the potential for case studies. So where does all of this sit when you're an internal IT department? It doesn't. So what, I hear you say - none of this affects me in my cosy cubicle in my centralised office for my Big Brand company. Well, be careful...you might be wrong.
Think of this, your company can afford you and you're not cheap. You want a car, a bonus, a travel allowance, medical benefits, 30 days holiday, 2 weeks a year training
If you read books on investment or business, you’ll know that all the experts tell you to develop an “exit strategy” for your investments or your business, even while writing the business plan. Without using a bunch of financial jargon, basically it’s setting up a plan to make sure you get the MOST out of your assets when you sell or close the business or investments.So how does this relate to you? Developing an exit strategy should be an essential part of EVERYONE’S career plan. Why? YOU ARE YOUR MOST IMPORTANT ASSET! Think of yourself as Me, Inc. You are your own CEO. You want to be in control of your own career, on your own terms. In your current position, you’ve no doubt invested a lot of time and effort to get where you are, to know what you know.<
When you work for the supplier (particularly a small one), chargeable utilisation is paramount and measured constantly. Apply this with rates and you know exactly what's going on in the bank account. Senior staff don't all have their own PA's, fixed overheads are minimised down to flowers in reception and coffee beans for the techies. If utilisation or rate decreases, there is cash burn. Eventually heads need to roll, literally out of the door, so that the company can survive.
If that isn't motivation for folk to deliver projects on time, to budget I don't know what is.
Furthermore, this is fairly good motivation to establish a good working relationship with your clients so that [a] there is repeat business and [b] you've got references and the potential for case studies. So where does all of this sit when you're an internal IT department? It doesn't. So what, I hear you say - none of this affects me in my cosy cubicle in my centralised office for my Big Brand company. Well, be careful...you might be wrong.
Think of this, your company can afford you and you're not cheap. You want a car, a bonus, a travel allowance, medical benefits, 30 days holiday, 2 weeks a year training
When healing professionals market their practice, they often attempt to cover all bases by trying to appeal to all types of people with all sorts of problems. Often this stems from a fear that if you don’t attract everyone you won’t fill your private practice.While there are successful generalists out there, in the current competitive market it is wise to target your marketing efforts to a specific population(s) you want to work with.Why is this the case? In the first place, people like to hire those who they view as being experts because there is an expectation that they will then get the best service possible. Think of what you do when hiring someone. For example, if you had chronic back pain and had a choice between hiring an alternative health practitione
If that isn't motivation for folk to deliver projects on time, to budget I don't know what is.
Furthermore, this is fairly good motivation to establish a good working relationship with your clients so that [a] there is repeat business and [b] you've got references and the potential for case studies. So where does all of this sit when you're an internal IT department? It doesn't. So what, I hear you say - none of this affects me in my cosy cubicle in my centralised office for my Big Brand company. Well, be careful...you might be wrong.
Think of this, your company can afford you and you're not cheap. You want a car, a bonus, a travel allowance, medical benefits, 30 days holiday, 2 weeks a year training
Position yourself for promotions, better customers and pay raises. Follow and adjust an annual plan with dates. Take time every day to see if you are on track. Program yourself to do this everyday as part of your Career Management Regimen…the repetition will get you where you want to be. (change your behavior if you don't have time to plan - investing in planning time will save time! Also, don't hold yourself back while planning - you can't steer a ship that is not moving!)Set your personal benchmarks – goals. Compare with the expectations your customers/boss/company have for you. Be on the same page with documented rewards: “When I accomplish (A,B and C), I will realize (these additional responsibilities) for compensation that looks like (this)”.• Make
Think of this, your company can afford you and you're not cheap. You want a car, a bonus, a travel allowance, medical benefits, 30 days holiday, 2 weeks a year training, you want to get paid even when you're not working because you're "sick" - you are expensive.
Stating the obvious now, this means that your employer ahs money, money to spend on IT. The question is, do you now what this means...? OK, I'll let you in on a secret. It means that other people would like that money. They would like to earn the money that currently gets paid to you. The rest is simple. You see what happens is that someone forms a company to provide IT services. These services include your exact job, the exact job description. But there's are some differences, ones that are pretty hard for you to compete with;
1. They'll be cheaper
Your skills are generic IT skills, they are not location specific. So, let's go somewhere in the world where labour is cheaper and source your skills.
2. They will only charge for work that they do You cost money every day, regardless of whether you actually do anything productive or not.
3. They will offer guarantees. No delivery, no pay - simple as that You don't offer any. If is doesn't work, you'll carry on clocking up time until it does.
4. They will offer fixed price projects. You specify, they deliver, you pay. You won't do this, many can't do this. It's too much pressure for many.
So there's just four reasons why your job is on the line. I know you're probably thinking that your IT department is so huge, it couldn't possibly undergo such a massive transformation. Be careful jumping to conclusions. For many companies what you are thinking is true - at the moment. But it only takes one early adopter to be the first domino and the rest will either fall into line or fall out of business.
Consider this. A retail bank, millions of customers, hundreds working in IT. If a proportion, let's say only half, where replaced by a service provider millions could be saved. If the bank passed on these savings to the customers by way of an interest rate rise, what's going to happen? Exactly, customers are going to flock over to the bank. What happens next? Well the customers haven't just been magi
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