Big picture advice worth it

Most business owners or IT managers will meet their IT partners regularly for an overview to ensure they are on track with budgets and vision.

It is also likely that subjects discussed will include service level agreements, issues that have been resolved and those that need to be addressed.

It is important to keep in mind during these meetings that you should only be spending money on IT to increase business productivity, reduce cycle/decision time by staff and/or increase responsiveness to the client base – and preferably, all three.

Spending outside this could cost money without providing any real benefit.

These meetings should be held monthly and with an account manager, not a technician. Basically, one is a "business adviser" and the other a "fixer". This is not to downplay the intelligence or capability of a technician.

An account manager is the guide who travels with you. He has made the journey before, knows where you can and can't take shortcuts and knows all the key places along the journey to stop.

He knows the safest and most comfortable places to stay and knows all the best mechanics should the car need to be repaired while travelling. He is a trusted adviser. He knows where you are going and why you are going there.

An IT technician is a mechanic. Experience has shown me technicians like fixing stuff. They like playing with things. They like to "open the hood" and take the engine out to replace the sparkplug.

They play an essential role but they are trained to fix physical things and play with infrastructure. They may talk in acronyms and concepts that are hard for the layman to understand.

They are not trained to understand business drivers or goals or how to fit this in with business growth.

Technicians also acting as business advisers is the reason that many business owners don't really understand what IT is or why it is of value to their business. Technicians should never ever be business advisers.

Smaller IT firms will try to be everything to everyone but that just doesn't work. For these groups, the technician is likely to be the first point of contact, and probably the person who fixes things on site.

The approach of an industry standard IT provider is different. You will be assigned a fulltime account manager whose job is to:

1. Be available whenever support is needed.

2. Provide the best advice concerning the business's IT requirements including what similar companies are doing and, most likely, what some of the competition is doing.

3. Help plan a road map and budget to ensure you reach goals, on time and within budget.

4. To be the "one point of contact" between the business and their company and to manage whatever resource is needed to help you along the journey.

5. To do what they say they will, when they say they will.

6. To understand your business, financially as well as strategically.

7. To talk in layman's terms about what they are doing to help you achieve goals and to de-mystify IT by talking in simple, clear and concise terms. Basically it should be information without the acronyms.

* Patrick Kershaw is a franchise owner for Horizon Pacific, a s nationwide technology support provider specialising in assisting SMEs with all their technology requirements. For further information, go to www.horizonpacific.com

- © Fairfax NZ News