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Tuesday, August 09, 2005Is it the Board or the IT management that's in the dark?
Microsoft's Vaughan Smith's Opinion article in this week's Computer Weekly magazine is more than just a little thought provoking. In it he suggests that IT Managers are the 'victims' of the piece just as much as the Board Directors are the villains.It's not only that the board doesn't know the value of their IT assets; they do not understand the value that IT has within the business A business that transacts in excess of £900,000 every month over a single internet connection uses a firewall built on cheap Intel PC hardware, an ADSL connection with no backup. The Board are asking the IT Manager to reduce costs because they, the board, see a downturn in the business. This year they expect minimal growth in revenues after a period of sustained multi digit expansion over the past 5 years. The IT Manager is asked to cut costs yet he knows that the ADSL connection is coming under severe strain, the remote sales force and their new VPN connections are not performing as well as they anticipated. The customers using the extranet & e-ordering system are complaining about poor performance during busy periods. New and some existing customers are not converting from the old telephone & fax methods of for placing orders to the extranet because they have heard some grumblings from the early adopters. The board look at the IT department as a cost. They can't see that the risks of NOT investing in better, more efficient and reliable infrastructure is MORE important in a static or declining market than in a bullish one. They can't see the far east intercepting the technology and making their e-ordering systems the ONLY way to do business, driving costs out of their sales process and making them more resilient to changes in market demand. They have forgotten the some of the old lessons - invest or decline- they have lost the imagination that made them take a chance on the e-order system in the first place. The board look at the IT department as a cost. The BT ADSL router gets too hot on that one day in August the UK gets it's summer.......... Related Links Computer Weekly Firms fail to support out of office staff posted by Robert Campbell 12:40 PM
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