Business success is no longer just about what tech tools you have; now success is all about how your business uses those tech tools -- and a business' IT department holds that key. Enterprise Management Associates' Hank Marquis explains to bMighty how a smaller business can unlock the potential buried within IT by learning how to work effectively with the IT department.
Defining IT services sounds like a luxury for smaller businesses with limited staff and resources and lots to do. But according to Hank Marquis, director of IT service management consulting at Enterprise Management Associates and a former managing partner and the CTO at itSM Solutions, defining IT services is the first step in ensuring that your IT department not only functions and keeps your business up and running but also can contribute to your business' success. As Marquis points out, every business has access to the same tech tools -- it's how you use them that can give your smaller business a competitive advantage. bMighty spoke to Marquis to learn how small and midsize businesses can begin to see their IT departments as business partners (and not as "Your Company's Computer Guy" from Saturday Night Live) and let them help the business take on their larger size competitors -- and win.
bMighty: Defining IT services seems like a "big company" task. Why do small and midsize businesses, with small IT departments, have to do this?
Hank Marquis: Small and midsize businesses have to take into account that they need to define IT services. It's more a question of maturity than size. The IT manager in an SMB has all the information. I just worked with a small real estate firm that had a small IT organization, but the IT guys had no idea what the agents did. Management and users there felt like IT was a necessary evil and it's important for them to understand why management and users felt the way they did -- because they were really not friendly or forgiving. That's what I mean by maturity. A more mature organization has an understanding of what users do. But they also don't understand that those agents are sitting in a car trying to get directions to a house and the server is down.
It's also important because most SMBs have an average of seven independent individual tools that aren't integrated, so none of those tools have an end to end view of the service being provided. The router guy says the router is fine, the phone guys say the phone is fine, the server guy says the server is fine, and so on and so on.
SMBs don't have an integrated system, so defining services is really important. They need to understand what the server is doing for business, like speed resolution or improve quality. When you have a list of things to look at, a map or a model of the service, you can look at it even with a disconnected tool and you can build connections in your mind.
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bMighty: It sounds like the IT department needs to understand the business they're in. Why?
Marquis: The IT department needs to know what the company does. One company I work with is a cement manufacturing company. The cement takes less than an hour to harden once it's mixed and they have to get where they're going before that. A user called in because they were having trouble dispatching the truck and the IT guy says "I'm going to lunch. I'll deal with it when I get back." That's showing he didn't understand that it hardens.
IT guys love to say the server was up 99.7% of the time this year. But the cement guy doesn't care about that.
The same goes for e-mail -- you can give it to users, but how are they going to use it? That's what service definition brings to the table. It lets smart people in IT improve it and make it better. If they get closer to the business, they can do what should be done in IT -- they can focus on that and contribute in meaningful ways.
bMighty: How can the IT department contribute to the business?
Marquis: What business decision can you make based on what IT gives you if IT doesn't speak business? Not much. Seldom do IT guys show up and give them value for business decisions. I was working with a small delivery company that wanted to move to a different type of cell phone. The boss rejected it, saying a phone is a phone. Finally the IT guys stopped thinking about speeds and feeds and realized they had to speak in business terms. They explained that the new system can handle GPS and will speed up deliveries. Forget about support and making my IT life simpler. They need to understand what you do as a business. Unfortunately, many guys in SMBs say 'I know what to do because I'm an IT geek. You should just listen to me.' They won't last long.
