It is a long-held, widely-accepted point of business 'wisdom' that the tees, fairways and greens of the golf course are a great place for business networking, relationship building and career advancement.  Hey, I subscribe to that body of thought.  A few years back I was with a company that held an annual summer picnic and prior to the picnic was a golf outing for those that wished to participate.  The CEO, Sales Executives and almost all the management staff went every year on the golf outing.  Knowing that was the place to be, I took up the game of golf.  The following year there I was on the fairways with the best and brightest of our company.

However, according to the “CIO Magazine Golf Networking Survey” conducted earlier this year not everyone sees it that way.  Of 394 IT professional respondents, 55 percent say that golf has helped advance their career and 45 percent say that it has not.  Maybe those 45 percent are playing it wrong, don’t have a low enough score or are golfing with the wrong people?  Seriously, it could be any one or none of those reasons, but the one thing the survey does prove is that hitting the greens does not guarantee instant success.

One piece of advice that I will give is that if you do not enjoy the game, don’t frustrate yourself.  There are other ways to do business networking, everything from the traditional professional organizations to the new ways of keeping in touch.  I myself am a long time member of the Tri-State Midrange User Group (TSMUG) of the Southwest Ohio Information Technology Community and with my newly achieved CBAP^® certification I am a member of The International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA^®), of which there is a Cincinnati chapter.  I have and will regularly attend meetings and events of these organizations for both the knowledge and networking value of their programs.

One method of networking that has propped up here in the past few years and is gaining wide acceptance in the business community is on-line networking via social media, such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.  New on-line business communities are popping up all the time with a new groove on things.  If this is your cup of tea, find one that suites your needs and join in.

CIO magazine also has advice for business networking.  Whichever method you choose to expand your horizons, increase your influence and boost your career one thing is clear; in these economic times it would be a mistake not to invest some time and resources into this area.  With Business IT Outsourcing and other influences that are reducing the number of Cincinnati IT jobs and IT jobs available across America, your social networking skills and efforts may mean the difference between whether you are employed or in the unemployment lines.

Information technology consulting enables me to observe many organizations and to determine what works and what doesn’t.  In the past the one basic quality that an IT strategy consultant needed was to be technical and to have a skill in a given area.  However what was true yesterday is not true today.  Today, it seems this is a nice quality to have but it is not the only characteristic one needs to advance their career in information technology.

To succeed today as an IT strategy consultant, and to advance your career to the “next level”, you need some very basic skills or qualities that most successful IT consultants have. There is a commonality amongst successful IT consultants that I see that enable individuals to stand-out from their peers.  Those traits include:

1. The ability to assess needs.  Technology as s business moves at the “speed of light” and organization needs true business partners to assist them with good judicial decisions.

2. The successful IT strategy consultant must be able to create a vision.  If you cannot articulate how an application or an integration solution should work, you cannot expect to have acceptance from the person or group you are trying to influence.
 
3. You must have the ability to create a plan and to create a map to carry out your plans.  Plans cannot be approved if they cannot be understood.

4. Ability to pool resources.  Focusing on how to identify the right resources at the right time greatly enhances the chances that your vision and plan can gain acceptance with your client or organization.

5. Must adapt to a “client service” mindset.  A high level of client service is important for any successful IT organization.  Make sure that you not only understand your department or clients needs, you also know how to meet them.

6. The ability to manage projects.  It is well known that over 70% of all IT project failures are a result of poor project management.  Make sure your projects do not contribute to this statistic.

7. Ability to accept and respond to change management processes.  Getting things done by accepting the fact that things will change will go along way in advancing ones career in IT consulting.

8. Ability to communicate effectively.  Many projects fail because visions and plans are not communicated effectively.  Organizations and/or clients cannot endorse what they do not understand.  Technology consultants that achieve the greatest career success are those that communicate effectively.

9. Understand how to prove return-on-investment (ROI).  Organizations and managers in today’s marketplace must be able to provide a ROI for any project.  Make sure that you can attach a clear picture of ROI for an application or project that you are a part of.

10. Be flexible.  Things change in today’s IT environment on a regular basis.  Make sure you are not so rigid that you are unable to “think outside of the box”.

The qualities that I have spoken about here are not etched in stone but they are qualities that I have observed to help and assist any IT strategy consultant that is trying to advance his or her career.

The short answer to that question is no.  Technology, like anything else happens in spurts and goes through trends.  The Outsourcing of IT is no exception.  For all of those organizations that thought they had an “IT Strategy” they quickly learned that the strategy is only as good as the business model that it supports.
Outsourcing IT is no exception to this rule. 

For the past several years organizations have learned that outsourcing may not be the ultimate answer because “the playing-field” has changed and organizations need to adapt.  In this period of downturn, the outsourcing of IT to foreign countries is no longer the bargain it once appeared to be.  Since the U.S. dollar has been devalued it has had a direct effect on the pricing that organizations receive from off-shore countries.

I wrote yesterday in my blog, “Outsourcing and IT” that in India, a country that supplies and services a good portion of the U.S. outsourcing needs is starting to use third and fourth tiered personnel to supply services.  The glaring problem with this is that it suggests that organizational projects can be put in jeopardy by continuing the same practices with less than qualified people.  This costs a company time and investment leaving an organization questioning, “where is my competitive advantage?”

Insourcing is not something you hear about every day, and yet, it appears that the brunt of the American Corporation Outsourcing has tapered off and is on the decline, along with the US Dollar. Insourcing is when companies decide that they can afford to do the same jobs that they sent to other countries, in-house or thru local subsidiaries and technology consulting firms.

In the practice of information technology I would suggest that we have been hit hard by outsourcing and it has lead to massive lay-offs.  Now some of those jobs are coming back or so we think.  I believe there is a balance that can be struck.  Companies may not be able to build massive IT departments like they once had, that is not cost effective, but they can partner with technology consulting firms to assist them when they need IT staffing talent or when they need IT expertise or mentoring from  time-to-time.  My organization STAR BASE actually has a program called "CIO Assist" which is a way to provide any organization with the IT expertise they need on a short-term basis

So, to answer the original question, “Can anything remain Stable?”  The answer is no, but in this case, a combination of insourcing/outsourcing does just the opposite for the US Economy, it helps lower the trade deficit, provides more jobs for Americans and it means a more streamline process. Perhaps this is a start in helping to repair the economic downturn in this country. This pleases me as I hope it does my readers.  Blog on!

The recent economic challenges that the United States and the rest of the world is facing has effected more than the loss of jobs.  Organizations that were dependent on Indian community out sourcing are now faced with a new dilemma, inferior talent.

About 60% of India’s IT outsourcing business comes from the United States and 40% of the work is in the banking, insurance and financial service sectors.  To ensure that they can maintain or at least keep pace with the downturn, these firms are taking steps to protect themselves from the problem.  One of the first steps they are taking comes in the form of reduced hiring of entry-level engineers and looking at second-tier cities with lower labor costs.  The Washington Post recently published an article on the effects of the economic downturn and the steps that the Indian community it taking to combat the downturn.

The outsourcing of IT has been driven by the insatiable appetite of the United States that will continue to drive the practice in hopes of reducing headcount.  A word of caution would be advisable for the future.  If outsourcing means getting second and third-tier resources what will that do for an organization that is seeking a competitive advantage?  Clearly it will be hard to justify the economic benefits of untested staffers.

My organization, STAR BASE Consulting, Inc., tests and pre-screens every candidate that we place.  We believe that a poor candidate is a reflection on our firm.  My suggestion is that regardless of which firm your organization uses to produce IT staffing, do not choose a firm that does not test and who does not pre-screen.  In this day and age of identity theft it appears easy for a person to represent themselves as someone they are not. 

Do you want to risk the success of your projects and the reputation of your IT department to an organization that promises more with less?

 

Those of us that have been a part of the Web from the on-set, have witnessed various stages of web and Internet development.  Web 1.0 was about Commerce, Web 2.0 is about community, and the next phase Web 3.0 is about connectivity.

This means we will need improved security, service oriented architecture (SOA), RSS feeds, bookmarking or tagging, crowd sourcing, crowd hacking, and user generated business applications that can be built by technical and non-technical people alike.  It also means that there will be new career opportunities in web development because organizations of all types will need to improve the level of communication by utilizing technology tools that can automate and intelligently route information

This newly developed web connectivity will play a proactive role in getting multiple generations to adapt to new processes and tools for the purpose of creating more efficiency, which will lead to greater productivity.  The next evolution of web development will improve the velocity of getting things done by using new Web based tools to coordinate, mandate, and route workflow.  Organizations will need to embrace the fact that technology and web application development can make the impossible – possible.  One is only limited by their own imagination because the next generation of web development applications is going to make connectivity to prospects, customers, and future customers a reality.
 
The fact-of-the-matter is, globalization is here to stay and organizations need to respect the fact that with the new push of connectivity through the web, mergers and acquisitions will move to a global scale and worldwide conglomerates will gain power.

Researchers have predicted that 3D immersive communities will be a part of Web 3.0 as well.  In the business-to-business atmosphere, manufacturers, distributors and retailers will be able to put their perspective clients into a 3D immersive environment so that end-users can experience life-like environment right from their desktop.  Is your organization ready for the next generation of web application development, or do you need some guidance to prepare for the next step?

If a dwindling 401k and questionable job security keep you awake at night, you're not alone. Experts are offering IT solutions professionals' advice on how to handle these tough times and remain employed. By updating your skills, taking on new responsibilities, and working to become indispensable to your employer, you can ensure security.

"As any company looks to control costs, they look to IT people to become a jack of all trades in some respects," John Estes, vice president with IT staffing firm Robert Half Technology told CIO.com. "No one in IT can truly be that, but more companies are looking to staff to have broader, more diverse skill sets."

This coincides with what Michael writes, “Clients seek out individuals with multiple skill-sets that can multi-task, change and adapt as technology or market needs dictate,” in his blog.

The Computer Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) reports that it has seen an uptake in certifications training, which indicates that IT solutions professionals see the need to update their skills to remain competitive. "Historically, we see that certification volumes rise when the economy is somewhat sluggish, and that is indicative of less jobs and more competition in the market," says Kyle Gingrich of CompTIA.

As you know I am all for obtaining IT certification and increasing your skill set.  You can take on more responsibility and/or lead projects with real ROI to work toward becoming indispensable to your employer, but let’s face facts folks—true job security is an illusion.  To be IT outsourcing proof and have absolute job security, you have to own the company.  In one of my former lives I worked for a CFO whose father-in-law owned the company.  Not long after I left the company I heard that the CFO was hitting the unemployment lines.  So as one who has been around the block a few times, who has had the economy knock his feet out from under him and who has personally been downsized and outsourced—job security is an illusion; even if your title is CIO.  Stay tuned!

A few weeks ago I met with a client that was looking for some business analysts to help them with business application development.  One of our Cincinnati IT consultants just got his CBAP and he was going to be available in the right time frame, so I started to think this would be a perfect fit.  While there are thousands of business analysts around, there are less than 500 CBAPs in the world and we are fortunate enough to have one on our IT staff.

This IT staffing position should be a slam-dunk, right?  Wrong!  The client also wanted very specific industry experience.   While our consultant has industry experience, it was not in the right area.   Fortunately we were able to recruit business analysts with the needed skills.   As Michael points out as part of this post, “clients are very specific on what they need and they are unwilling to pay for “learning curves.”   Pretty much seems like we have become a “risk adverse” society.

In part one I discussed the security issues between an enterprise and the application development teams. Part two will discuss standardization and its effects.

Standardization is a very important concept. It allows seamless communication, and quick deployment of technology. Standardizing on a singular operating system will eliminate the need for any interface or integration between application development teams. The lack of a standard process is a serious problem, but standarziation taken to the extreme is also a problem. Security is not the only reason application development teams can’t reach new technology. Someone in the organization has made a decision on what hardware and software is appropriate to use. Unapproved software is subject to disciplinary actions and even termination. This policy is in place primarily to keep non IT staff from downloading, but since there aren’t exceptions, IT suffers from not learning new techniques and technologies. Some software is exclusive to a single group and doesn’t need standardization. Some third party software only runs on certain systems, so it may interfere with your accepted software list. Change is difficult to accept. New software may improve one aspect of your business, but it may introduce a new error. One must carefully weigh the pros and cons of your new technology. You need a set of criteria to judge the effectiveness, so one can make an informed decision. The decision makers aren’t familiar with the application or the technology. If the introduced software produced a serious problem, it is the decision maker, not the application development team that would answer for it. It is understandable that decision makers use draconian measures to remove the issue entirely. On the other hand, if standards were set in stone, we would all still be using COBOL on mainframes.

It seems that we have become a keyword driven society these days.  I just got back from the annual NACCB show.  This is where IT staffing and IT consulting firms gather to talk and learn about best practices going on in the industry.  There were several Ohio IT services firms represented.  Star base, Inc was the only Cincinnati information technology company attending.

One thing that is amazing to me is the sophistication of the résumé tracking software that is available.  The IT staffing industry is becoming very automated just like other industries.  All of the software is able to parse a résumé and extract the keywords to populate a candidate profile.  This makes it very easy for the recruiters to do keyword searches.  But woe to those that don’t have the right keywords.  Seems like some are turning keywords into "buzz words" and job specifications. 

I was talking to a fellow owner, who has been in IT consulting for many years.  His firm specializes in Oracle data conversions and IT staffing.  He was telling me about a staffing requisition that required Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle database skills.  The client was going to convert from one database to the other.  This is something that they have done many times and have extensive experience.  But because the résumé they submitted did not have the same exact version number on it, the candidate was rejected.

Those of us in IT consulting know that conversion tools don’t usually change much from version to version and having experience with what the “got yas” are is critical to success.  Apparently this customer was just looking at the keywords and couldn’t see beyond them.

  It has been a tumultuous couple of weeks here in Cincinnati, OH.    On September 14, 2008 it was windy in the morning. Little did we know that the wind developed from hurricane IKE would meet a cold front pushing down from the north.  By the afternoon, these two fronts collided, power went out, houses were damaged, and trees were split and uprooted all over the area.

This past week, Cincinnati, along with the rest of the country, is struggling with the fallout from Wall Street and the financial crisis. As a result unemployment is pushing 7%, causing people and business to be concerned about the future.  It makes me think of the 80’s song, Changes, by David Bowie.  The one thing we can always count on is that nothing remains the same and changes are inevitable. http://www.metrolyrics.com/changes-lyrics-david-bowie.html.

It has never been more apparent that change is inevitable as it is in the IT industry.  The global economy dictates that organizations must make themselves agile and lean to compete in today’s marketplace.  Everything from application development, to IT infrastructure, to IT staffing must be scaled to a sustainable business model that ensures that organizations can move rapidly and not wait for time consuming business practice models that do not have the where withal to break down complex business issues into quick models of efficiency.

Likewise, IT application developers, infrastructure managers, and project managers need to face the reality that organizations do not have the time, patience, or money to invest in old bureaucratic processes and methodologies that take too long and cost too much.  Clients need tasks accomplished in an interactive manner to ensure “speed to market.”

Michael Hugos talks about this very subject in a recent article written for CIO magazine.  In his article: "Complexity, Agility and the Future of the IT Profession," he talks about how the IT industry has changed, how organizations struggle with those individuals who struggle with change and insist on doing it the same old way, and the real needs of the enterprise. 

It is those individuals and organizations that can grasp hold of these concepts while empowering organizations to become nimble and agile that will become the difference makers in the IT profession of the future.   Those are my thoughts.  What do you say?

Did you ever notice that people like to give advice?  It seems that everyone I talk to these days have some advice.  As the chief executive officer of an IT consulting and IT staffing firm, I do a lot of listening.  If I took everyone's advice and implemented it, I would need to change the title of CEO to mean Chief Everything Officer.   Let me give you some examples of some great advice:

You need to be out building the relationships with your IT staffing customers.  If you can get two or three meetings a day scheduled, that would be great.  You need to spend more time in sales, meeting new prospects and diversifying your IT consulting business.  You need to spend more time with your IT consultants.  You need to spend more time looking at (fill in you favorite IT business solution).  You need to build IT solutions.

I could go on, but the point is, I'm not the Chief Everything Officer.  While all of these are important, no one person can do all of these things, all of the time.   That’s why we have sales, marketing, CAMs (Consulting Account Managers), team leaders, administrative people and IT consultants.  If you’re not getting the attention you need from the folks in those roles, I certainly want to know about it.  

After looking at that list, I think I need a vacation.  ; ) …..

The main point of my blog is to discuss the best way to handle application development. As a long time enterprise application development team member, I have seen the right way and wrong way to things, and my blog (and many others) will try to tell you "the right way" to do things. Nobody, until now, will discuss handling "the wrong way" to do things.

Background
My client purchased a product from a third-party vendor that seemed to have all of the features they needed. The only problem was the product is really meant for small/mid-sized businesses (SMB), and not for the company of this size. This product just doesn’t scale well, and since it’s a vendor product, I can’t do anything directly to fix it. We have issues with the current build, but the business unit wants to increase their presence in their current product, and roll out a new product by year-end. Either project would ambitious given our current state of production, but the relationship between the business unit and IT is one of a customer/vendor. There is nothing IT can say to focus on only one project. What is a consultant to do?

I have three things you should try to do focus on in such a situation:

Keep your head – There is a saying, "If you keep your head when everyone is losing theirs, you will have one more head than everyone else". This means to get the most out of you, the product, and the project, focus on the flaws that can be fixed. Many of your client’s staff is directly responsible, so they tend to vent more. They are focused (and rightly so) on the problems giving them headaches. Look beyond the problems, and try to find a work around. Suggesting that the vendor re-architect their product may be the obvious answer, but it will accomplish nothing.

Make suggestions, respectfully – Clients who have been dealing with an issue tend to get cranky, and it shows with correspondence with vendors. Often times your counterpart has the same limited amount of change as you, so keep that in mind. Keep opinions, comments, and other issues out of your communications. Just explain your situation. If you have a better way of doing something, send an example. The extra work will help in your relationship with the vendor, and will help with fixing the issue.

Don’t worry about your duties – The product is Java based, and so the application will stop running because it uses too much memory. It will take a snap shot of the objects used, which is called a heap dump. My job as an enterprise development architect is to do what I can to get things running smoothly, so I have been analyzing the heap dumps, researching alternate paths for their current architecture, and suggesting possible solutions. Since they are a vendor, I have no access to their code, but I can see how they doing things by the heap dumps. Sometimes you feel like your client is the vendor not the client, but these experiences are valuable for your next assignment.

In summary, you are in a tough situation, but hey you’re an enterprise application development consultant. Stay calm, analyze the situation, make suggestions where appropriate, and do what the job takes to make bad situation better.

I had lunch yesterday with a person that I had not talked to for a couple of years.  One of the first questions he asked me was “How are things in the IBM world?”  I sort of bristled at the question, because my friend’s perception was that we only work with companies that had IBM.  The reality is, we are an IT consulting company and do a lot of work in the application development space.  While it's true, we are an IBM software partner, most of our application development takes place on other platforms. 

During part of the lunch we talked about some of the other areas of IT that we deal with.  That includes IT business solutions, IT outsourcing and IT staffing.   The problem is that people do not react to reality; they react to their perception of it. Therefore if you control how they perceive reality, which is easier than controlling reality, you control how they will react.

It also sometimes is said to point out to people that it's not enough to make something so for people to act like it is so; you have to make them know it too.  Hopefully our marketing will start changing perception. Click here for a reality check.

As more service organizations have become more similar and commoditized, many have found the only way to acquire and maintain high value corporate customers is to differentiate on service.  While that strategy might appear to require an investment in customer service technology and staff, many companies are deploying integration technology to simplify operation procedures along with customer information systems on a single global platform.

The resulting ease of company-to-customer communications, streamlined work flow, and business process visibility, creates a highly differentiated environment where organizations and their customers can decrease inefficiencies and drive revenue growth.

Information technology consulting professionals can assist an organization to become integrated while automating human processes.  Today’s high competitive business market requires the ability to quickly meet or exceed customer expectations.  After years of dealing with expensive resource planning implementations, organizations need to deliver models of efficiency because their customers demand it.  Through proper enterprise application development and IT business solutions, any company can ensure that they can deliver rapid, pain-free reliable solutions to their customers.

Organizations that insist on relying upon high complex legacy systems will face a significant challenge in today’s world of “I want it now” mentality. So how does a serious competitor meet customer needs while still maintaining attractive margins and offering differentiated services?

Here are some suggestions:

1.  Implementation of a multi-enterprise gateway that will simplify complex internal data and customer communications. Differentiating on service with faster response times and access to business intelligence supporting customer efficiency and growth

2.  Simplify complex data and customer communication.  The simplification of the complex value-chain is important to any industry, but is doubly important to financial firms.  To enable more efficient and secure communications, banks need to look at business process automation, enabling their customers to connect with a single connection gateway.

3.  Protecting Against Risk – more and organizations are required by their customers and their partners to provide service level agreement with built-in standards that endure workflow and delivery.  Sarbanes Oxley has made it imperative that organizations have documented standards, or risk both penalty and claims against them.  An effective multi-enterprise information exchange gateway enables visibility into communication s traffic so that any organization can fix issues with a quick resolution before problems occur.

With better visibility and control, organizations become more informed and efficient operations.  When organizations are freed from ongoing pressures to manage connections and standards, they can focus on driving growth through accelerated business development and bottom-line productivity.
 

STAR BASE, Inc. is passionate about the information technology industry and it prides itself on delivering the best solutions and the best professionals to implement those solution.  As a full service provide to corporate America, it is understood that our business is one of ups and downs.  When the economy is good and our clients are doing well, there is a need for our service.  When organizations struggle, consultants must scramble to find suitable business.

The trend in 2008 is that the clients' business for the most part has maintained, but for the most part it has been less than stellar.  That means the need for our services and placement of qualified individuals for application development or IT integration, has been less in demand as well.  That means there are people “on the bench” and any consultancy cannot afford to have people on “the bench”.

It is no secret that the American economy is struggling today. Organizations of all sizes and types are trying to maintain a standard of business while we wait for the economy to improve.  For our firm that means a couple of thing.  First we need to offer new service to meet our client’s immediate needs while ensuring that we keep a healthy balance of qualified professionals for client projects.

In the placement business, it is no longer prudent to keep idle professionals on the bench.  The individuals need to be part of a project or must be delivering some sort of IT solution.   Regardless, at our organization we work at maintaining a fine balance between bench people and project people.  Unlike many of our competitors we are a local Cincinnati IT consulting firm that sees the value of maintaining a constant bench of professional to serve our clients needs.

Sometimes, we do not have the right skill-sets for a client’s needs and we have to search for the best possible fit.  When we do find the right candidate we make sure that we test each candidate to ensure they can meet our potential clients.
Most firms that provide IT staffing do not follow our lead they simply hire as clients need the personnel for their projects.  Which model is better?  We believe in testing all candidates first to ensure the client is getting the best possible candidate.  To not do so cost any client time and money plus the risk of not completing mission critical projects on time and with-in budget.

Those are my thoughts, what are yours?

I have written a couple of times in the past promoting the idea of obtaining certification to exhibit your knowledge and experience in a chosen subject area.  Yet, I read another CIO.com article warning of the dangers of buying practice tests online.  They name a couple of websites that sell ill-gotten material; you will definitely want to stay away from these named websites.

This article warns would-be IT Certification candidates that should you purchase illegal “study material” to take an IT Certification exam that the governing body of the IT Certification may “come after you” and punish you for your “cheating”.

Last week I sat for and passed the Certified Business Analysis Professional^TM (CBAP^®) examination offered by the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA^TM).  So as a person that now holds four IT Certifications I find it appalling that a company such as Microsoft or Cisco would go after the candidates for their certifications and attempt to “ruin” their career.  I do understand that there are “real” cheaters out there that knowingly cheat to get a certification just to beef up their resume, but I also realize how easy it would be to unknowingly purchase some ill-gotten practice material.  I can absolutely attest to how essential study material and practice tests are in preparing to obtain an IT certification.  It is impossible to pass an exam, of any kind, without preparing for it; and study material and practice tests are important tools in preparing for a certification exam.

I do realize the difficulty of shutting down these “brain dump” websites that sell this illegal material as most of them are setup in third world countries that do not respect the U.S. copyright laws.  However, going after the candidates for your certification is not the solution to the problem.  This will just inevitably lead to reducing the number of candidates for your certification and eventually lead to a reduced perceived value of the certification.  Not to mention the perceived “bully” impression that the company will inherit.

When it comes to IT Infrastructure, IT Business Solutions and Enterprise Application Development, professional certifications such as ITIL, CBAP^®, PMP^® or PgMP^® demonstrate expertise in a particular subject area.  When it comes to application software development certification in your chosen programming language(s) and/or platform(s) demonstrate subject matter expertise.  

These certifications do hold value in the eyes of IT hiring managers, H/R professionals and IT Staffing professionals.  A certification could be the difference of you getting a job or not getting the job.  So get certified, but research the certification to verify its worth in the IT world and be careful of the study material you use.

My last post was Losing the Battle and Winning the war.  Today I have a similar title, but that is the end of the similarity.  I had the opportunity a few weeks ago to hear a talk from a professor at the Fisher College of Business at Ohio State.   His topic was pretty interesting.  He was talking to a group of IT staffing company owners.  Most IT staffing companies have some sort of CRM, but what he was talking about was the opposite side of this which he called SRM or Supplier Resource Management. 

I’m not going to be able to adequately summarize a two hour talk in a few paragraphs, but one of the things that I thought was interesting is how companies are trying to commoditize IT staffing.  Looking at it from a numbers only point of view, he said that some companies have been able to reduce the cost of IT staffing by as much as 70%.   They have used a variety of purchasing techniques to accomplish this such as reducing suppliers, buying “in bulk”, instituting a VMS (vendor management system).  Being an IT consulting firm that also does IT staffing, I was not feeling too good about some of the trends discussed.  That was until he started talking about the real cost of savings.  

These same companies that have saved so much money, have also reduced their talent level to the point of not being able to accomplish anything.  The reduction in price has come at a cost of reduction in talent.   In some cases, companies were actually spending more than before.   This is because instead of one IT consultant, they may bring in two or more consultants.  There measurement was cost per hour by job title.   Cost per hour was indeed way down, but IT spend was up.

Another problem with the reduction in talent levels is that progress was not accomplished and that resulting in bringing in a high paid expert(s) toward the end of the project to try and salvage it.  The end result was little to no savings and huge opportunity costs to the business.   I guess the moral of the story is like the old saying “you get what you pay for.”

Application developers, for the most part, chose their career field because they have a passion for technology and they enjoy creating, developing and finding solutions for problems involving software.

In the technology consulting industry, application development services has been known to occupy people that like to work alone and can flat-out get the job done when traditional development cannot.  However, the new world of the global enterprise has changed and to survive and prosper the new application developer of today needs to have an appreciation for the idea that just building the application is not enough.  Enterprise application now development requires much more.

Application developers for the most part do not want any part of the business world. They simply want to develop and build.  They are faced with multiple challenges that perhaps they were not faced with in the past.  Organizations are requiring any employee or consultant to be able to multi-task.  This includes application developers.  They must have the capability to do several jobs and to understand how their developed application affects the “big picture.”

In his recent article, “8 Reasons CIOs Think Their Application Developers are Clueless”, Tom Wailgum, discusses exactly what CIOs think and what they are faced with on a daily basis.  CIOs need to be technical but they must also be business savvy. In-fact awareness of how to run a department or a business is becoming they key characteristic that organizations look for.  CIOs are tasked with the challenge of ensuring that the IT department is in strategic alignment with the business goals and objectives of the organization.
article: http://cxolyris.cxomedia.com/t/2559269/105281624/28054/0/

In the same sense application developers need to develop with the “big picture” in mind.  What does this mean?  It means that the sky is not the limit and that application bus be developed with efficiency and ease of use in mind.  Applications need to be developed within a given time-frame and not grow to the point where they cannot easily be changed.  Any application must understand what the goals and objectives of the organization are and how the applications they develop contribute to the overall mission.

No man is and an island and the sum total of the whole will assist any teams in better meeting the mission of the organization.

Leaders of many organizations fully understand that the IT department must contribute as a partner to offer value to the enterprise.  However, too many organizations still look at IT as nonstrategic service provider or as a cost center.

So how can any IT organization change this perception?

• Change your focus.  I would suggest that IT leaders need to change their culture and speak in terms of strategic growth rather than bare minimum maintenance.
• IT directors should not try and create vision in vacuum. Instead, solicit a select group of IT leaders that have vision and encourage them to brainstorm everything from IT infrastructure, to application development, to IT outsourcing services.
• This vision could be a detailed five year plan, along with a list of specific actions to engage others in meeting the groups’ targeted goals. To do this, break your chosen leaders into groups.  One group could be responsible for the ways to improves success and progress of maintenance projects.  Another could be to drive the effectiveness of the PMO, and still another could create metrics to gauge success by along with value demonstrations.  A fourth group could be tasked with eliminating the bottlenecks of process redesign.
• Build business-oriented IT managers.  Ensure that your senior managers have good business sensibility. Today, careers are not just about upward mobility, but about getting experiences across the enterprise.
  Having the entire team to contribute will give any organization a more comprehensive plan.  Furthermore, it will assist in building teamwork and focus for the individuals on the team in realizing that they are helping to change the culture while adding value to the entire organization.
• Perhaps one of the most obvious values of IT is to help drive cash to any organization's bottom line.  This can be done either directly or indirectly through IT optimization, IT automation, or business process automation. 

Each of these areas drives business value for the IT department.  If an organization is product focused IT capital investment can align itself directly to new product development.

Is your organization doing all it can to make sure IT is seen as vales rather than a cost center?

Have you ever read article that described your very behavior to a tee?  I just did.  Before I get into the article, let me give you some background.   We are a Cincinnati information technology consulting company that provides business technology consulting, IT strategy and IT staffing.  We do a great job for our customers and one of the things I struggle with is how often to contact them.   There is nothing worse than being bothered when you're in the middle of something.  It has always been my belief that customers would remember us and call us if they need our IT services again.  WRONG!!!!

Below is an excerpt from this article by John Doerr.  You can substitute STAR BASE, Inc. for Smith & Jones.
John Doerr: I am calling for Smith & Jones. Bill Smith did some work for you in the past and I am looking to find out the best ways for him to keep in touch with you in order to stay top of mind.  
Client of my Client: How is Bill? I remember the work he did for us. Oh gee, it's been over a year now. How time flies. His approach was so unlike anything we usually get. He was thoughtful, asked great questions, and actually changed what we were looking for. In the end, his suggestions made a huge difference for us.
John Doerr: Bill is doing great.
Client of my Client: Good to hear that. You know, I had forgotten about how good his work was. Too bad you didn't call last week. I just awarded a major assignment that was right up Bill's alley. I am so busy right now. I have trouble remembering things from last week, let alone last year. The assignment came up and I called who I met with most recently. They were in two weeks ago. Too bad for both of us, Bill probably would have been a great choice. Tell him to give me a call soon.

We just sent our monthly email blast earlier this week.  (To subscribe to our monthly musings, click here.)  (To see the September edition, click here.)  I got an e-mail reply that was very much like the excerpt above.  I looked in our CRM system and I last contacted him in September of 2007, almost a year ago.  The good news is that the client wants to talk with us about IT outsourcing.  So we might have lost the battle that we didn't know we were in, but hopefully, we will win the war.