In this current environment, the deepest recession most of us will ever see in our lifetimes, it is time to focus on the things that matter, and leave some of the emotional decisions behind.
In the past 6 months, and I suspect for the upcoming 12 months a lot of businesses have and will make tactical survival decisions. This includes stopping expenditure on anything not required to actually keep the business running, reducing staff and delaying purchase decisions.
I believe this needs to now taper off and a more positive look taken as to how you can invest in technology to maintain and grow your business.
We need to get smarter in our decision making process. Be harder on understanding the true costs of the technology, dig deeper to understand the true benefits of the technology and the true impact that the technology has made on the business.
In short, it’s time to take a Macro view. It’s time to make things easier.
The question I have for you, is are you prepared to do this and how will you do this?
Going back to basics, do you understand what you have in place today? Do you understand where your costs are? Do you have a clear set of guidance on where your business is today and where it wants to be tomorrow? And can you measure these things?
I have seen some really bad decisions made recently. Not because of what the decision was. But because of the reasons why.
Information Technology units, whether they are internal or an outsource organization need to get better at articulating the benefits to the fiscal decision makers and also the justifications and risks involved in either approving or not approving the recommendation.
And financial decision makers need to get better at understanding technology and how it can help the business. They need to have a better understanding of technology and how a good investment can be repaid many times over in quite a short period of time. Conversely a bad decision can cost more many times over too.
Past decisions are often held up as reasons not to change of invest further in technology. This needs to stop.
Coming back to the Macro view, the first step is to build a picture of your entire environment and how it hangs together. Understanding how the technology environment interacts with itself, how the systems integrate (or don’t) and how they are used by the business is key to making improvements. It is really important to interview the business users and understand how they use the systems, and how changes could be made so they can be more productive.
Change is not a bad thing for the business, if it will be beneficial to them. But you must invest in change and release management, invest in user transition and training and invest in your support teams and the technology they use to manage and maintain the systems.
The organizations I work with that have the best end-user use of technology also have the best support and maintenance people and systems. The ones that always complain about the purchase cost of technology and the difficulty in deploying and using the technology quite simply have either a lack of business and technology leadership, have under-invested in the past and are now feeling the effects, or have poor management people and systems.
Taking a Macro view also means having a consistent evaluation policy and process.
I work for Microsoft. Not many of our products are free. Many of our competitors are ‘free’. And yet when you sit down and evaluate in a consistent way the Macro view of how much the technology costs, the benefits to the business and the risk profile associated with the technology adoption, we very rarely come out 2nd.
The issue I see is that organizations play rules for some, rules for others. They stack us up in a pillar where they pay for our software and therefore expect and evaluate the security, updating, performance and management of our solutions. Then they compare that to a ‘free’ solution and are quite happy to accept a complete lack of all the above. And that is not a fair comparison. Consistency is key.
And believe me, when you sit down and work out the apples-for-apples comparison, there is no such thing as ‘free’.
The last thing you need to do is have a measurement tool, and that’s where the IO Model comes in. Map out where you are, understand the capability that you desire and require to deliver on what the business needs, and then measure that you actually achieved it!
I’ve seen this process take place, I’ve seen it work.
The question is, are you interested in making things easier?
So, how can we help you? Microsoft has an incredibly broad range of solutions, from the perimeter to the desktop application and just about everywhere in between. We can build you a solution that has a common platform, common usage experience and a common management solution set.
This means the overall costs are lower than piecemeal alternatives, your support and management teams have a lower training and experience index and your users can enjoy a consistent experience.
We are continuing to increase the benefits of this platform with the “Wave 14” releases this year and early next year, bringing even more ways to utilise our solutions, lower ongoing costs and increasing the benefits these solutions bring to your business.
The world has irrevocably changed in the last 6 months, not only with the way we view technology, but on the higher level of benefits that must be returned from any implementations.
Microsoft really can Make Things Easier for your business, with more bang-for-buck than any other options, a lower deployment cost, lower ongoing management, monitoring and maintenance costs, and a deeper commitment to customer satisfaction than anyone else. We have more investment in R&D proportionately than just about anyone else I can think of, and we will continue to ensure you get value for money from your ongoing investments with us.
If you don’t believe me, do some investigation, compare us in an apples-to-apples study against our competition.
And my last comment is, if you do invest with Microsoft, make sure you actually DEPLOY the solutions you buy! No value is ever derived from a solution never used.
