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Is your IT Manager a Dinosaur?
9th May 2011
There is new information technology, becoming available at an incredible rate - technology like smart phone apps, web downloads and all kinds of gizmos.
Who do you have that's keeping you advised of all this?
Who do you have that is utilising this new technology to give you an edge on your competitors?
Unfortunately what I am finding more often than not is that IT Managers and IT people generally simply don't see this as their role. They still see their role as not having changed much from the days of main frames and of system analysts when information technology was something new, something special and something that only they understood and could manage for the entire company. I believe those days are gone - increasingly the management and maintenance of IT business systems for most organisations can be outsourced. Systems are much more reliable than they used to be generally we are all using standard software packages, rather than developing bespoke business management software, to run our organisations. What we are therefore often looking for by way of support is simply an an "insurance" that if, for example, when we have on our screen those dreaded words “you have committed a fatal error" that there is someone we can call 24/7 to solve the problem for us.
I do believe, however, that today every organisation needs people who are actively looking out for the very latest technology and thinking about how you could utilise it in your company to improve productivity or to help give you an edge on the competition.
Your IT people are maybe the prime candidates to take on this responsibility but you need to make them aware that that it is indeed their job to do so.
So what sorts of technology are we talking about here?
Let me give you a couple of examples:
Let's start with hardware – gizmos or gadgets - if you like. I still come across companies who are very reluctant to give their salespeople let alone other members of the staff, the latest smart phones, i-Pads, sat navs or other pieces of kit that could help improve their productivity. I know 'productivity' is often thought of as an old-fashioned word but in reality we should all be focusing on ensuring that our people maximise the time they spend do what, simply they are employed to do.
For example research into how field sales people spend their time showed that on average they spend just one third of their available time actually doing what you employ them to do - sitting with prospective customers trying to get orders. Technology can help increase that time spent and if you bear in mind that for every business there is a direct link between the time spent by salespeople selling to properly pre-qualified leads and the volume of orders received – this can only result in increased sales for the business - giving a massive return on the investment.
Having a smart phone or an i Pad that the sales guy can use to input into the companies CRM system online before moving on to his next appointment alone maybe all we are talking of here. Maybe they have poor typing skills so you may give them voice recognition software to improve their productivity further - which is now very accurate and relatively cheap.
I have a Client who is a fisherman - he has five trawlers - and one of the keys to the success of his business is to try and ensure that when the boats come into port to offload their catches they are turned around and get back to sea and earning as quickly as possible. However, when they do come into port, there is always some repair or service work to do.
Last year I happened to be visiting and showed him a new video recorder I had bought - a Vado HD - which is a great piece of kit, about the size of a mobile phone and only costs around $80 with a USB to download direct to your laptop. You can then choose to either e-mail the video or put it directly onto YouTube.
The next time I visited two months later his first words to me were:
"Thankyou Roger -for increasing my revenues!"
What he had done following my last visit was to buy five Vados and given one to each of his boat skippers and asked them of them ahead of coming in to port to video those problems they had on board or areas needing attention and to e-mail the videos to him. He told me that as a direct result on the last occasion that each of the boats had been into port he managed to turn them around between a day and one and a half days faster giving more fishing time at sea and increased revenues.
Another example of a great gadget is the Docupen - I have one - it looks like a large pen but can scan 100 full colour A4 documents which you can then instantly download and email or save. I use it regularly for example to email articles I have come across in my travels to Clients and potential Clients. I show it to sales people and they salivate - as they say they wouldn’t need to learn to read upside down anymore - for when the competitor's quote is left for them to view!
Maybe for you these or similar gizmos might prove valuable.
Who is is telling you that these, generally inexpensive, pieces of kit even exist?
Then there is software:
– at its simplest do you now have a QR code on your company literature?
This allows anyone who may want to visit to point their smart phone be directed straight to your door.
I was running a workshop recently I asked this question of the business leaders in the room one of them said that he had a number of garden centres and that this facility would be of great value to his business - but he had never even heard of it and he did not have anyone who might have told him that such things were even possible.
Do you?
Every day there are new Apps coming available that can help you and your people be more efficient and productive and make you, perhaps, different from to competition.
Are you thinking about developing your own apps?
Tesco has introduced a free App which allows you to point your smart phone any grocery item you come across anywhere and add it to your Tesco shopping trolley. This must have directly increased revenues for them.
I was fascinated to hear from a colleague of mine, Shaun Smith, who has has just launched his new book ‘Bold - how to be brave in business & win’ on Amazon and they made available ahead of the launch was a free App which allows people to be selective about the parts of the book they wish to download onto their Kindle. Alternatively, if they wish, they can input personal business information from which they will be recommended those parts of the book to download of most interest to them. This facility has already led to an extremely rapid update for the book.
This is a whole new world for many of us – are you looking at doing something similar?
Who do you have that is even suggesting to you that you should?
There are many, many other pieces of new technology becoming available some of which are very simple. I heard the other day about a free download for your mobile phone whereby with one button you can should dictate a message which is immediately sent to you as a text and an e-mail.
Then there are specialist websites and specialist services which didn't exist a few months or maybe a few years ago.
Are you using Mimeo for example for overnight printed material to customise and maybe personalise your literature and proposals?
Are you making use of Dropbox or similar to place large files in the Cloud that can be externally accessed by maybe customers or distributors or partners?
Magcloud makes producing a magazine extremely simple and cheap.
I have mentioned just a few examples here new technology (and of course it isn't necessarily just IT technology but more broader than that) that you may want to use effectively in your business - but how do you keep abreast of all this?
I do think that that it has to be true to say that the new generation – the 'Y' generation – are extremely techno-savvy and generally embrace this new technology much faster than most. They do seem to have an inherent ability to be aware of and to adopt and adapt the very latest.
So I need to ask you:
"Where are the 17 to 21-year-olds in your organisation?"
and if I was to come and ask them, " is your voice being heard?” what would they say?
Because we all need access to people of that age group and their voice needs to be heard. They may, indeed, become a vital ingredient ensuring that you really do stay ahead.
I was speaking to a group of CEOs recently in Glasgow and I provocatively suggested that they should all get rid of their IT managers unless he or she was aged 17. One of the delegates put up his hand and said “I'm okay then I recruited a new IT manager last month and he is 17”!
So what am I really saying here?
I am not saying that your organisation should be just young people but, most particularly, you need to have access to a ‘forum’ of maybe 17 to 22-year-olds who are encouraged to keep you advised on the very latest technology and to constantly propose ways by which you a can adopt it, use it or adapt it to give value to you and your organisation.
So back where we started - to your IT manager and your IT department:
The final question I would ask you is:
"How have you defined their job?"
"How have you defined their purpose?"
May I suggest that, as a minimum, it should be:
“To enable improved business success through the assimilation and adoption of the very latest information technology”
- and then hold them to it so they won’t be a dinosaur!
© 2011 Roger Harrop Associates
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