IT Strategy Consultant

In part one; I talked about some of the IT Strategies and business strategies that were discussed at the Techserve Alliance conference we recently attended.  I’ll admit I’m a sucker for quaint sayings and one of the speakers had a good one:  It’s time to take the Basset hound to the farm.  So what does that have to do with IT Strategy or business?

Plenty, takin’ the basset hound to the farm means it’s time to re-think what you are doing, why you are doing it, and who is doing it.  It’s time to eliminate products, services, processes or people that are not delivering value to the business.  This is not just an IT strategy, but an important business strategy as well.  It is critically important to make sure both business and IT are aligned. 

The trick is to figure out what your basset hound(s) are.  Every business that has been around for any length of time has one or more of these.  It may be a line of products that are kept in stock because it “rounds out the product line”, when the reality is the items are not that important.   It could be a service that our “customers really want”, but in reality  the service does not deliver value or it could be that “special process” that you do “because we have always done it that way”.  Then there is Bob.  Everybody likes Bob. Bob has been around forever and knows everything.  The problem is Bob doesn’t really do anything.

It’s always better to take the basset hound to the farm on your own terms rather than be forced into it by circumstances.  Take for example the company in New England that manufactured parts for submarines.  When the ship yard closed a few years ago, they were forced to change.  They redeployed their manufacturing expertise and now make parts for the medical industry.  What could they have accomplished if they had manufactured both parts for submarines and medical devices?  Could the business have been double the size?

That’s where an outside consultant can help.  They can be objective and bring an outside perspective to your current business and IT strategy.  STAR BASE is in a good position to teach old dogs new tricks”.  (Who let the dogs out? Who? Who?!)

Seems like it has been a while since I have had a chance to do a post.  For the last 3 weeks things have been absolutely crazy in our IT consulting world, but in a good way.  We had a chance to go to the Techserve Alliance national conference in Las Vegas.  I have heard all the jokes, including the one about it staying in Vegas.   We did learn that just because you are pre-checked with the airline, does not mean that your bags are.   We got our bags checked with literally a minute to spare and fortunately all made it back to Cincinnati.

Upon return, we signed a support contract for a new customer.  They trust us enough to outsource their entire IT applications support to us.  We have a real life example of an IT Strategy that was discussed at the conference (See #3).  Not only was IT strategy discussed but business strategy as well.  Here are some highlights:

1. Market Differentiation - customers have lots of choices, how will you stand out?

2. Improve Systems and methodology for delivering service- excellence, efficiency, depth of service.

3. Outsource what you can-eliminate the busy work that does not add strategic value.

4. Deal with the economy being slow to recover till 2012, spend your money wisely, hire wisely, fire quickly, and refine what is working, stop what is not.           

5. Build Alliances with like minded providers in different industries and sell collaboratively to serve the customers' need.

My favorite of these five is number four.  Said another way, its takin’ the basset hound to the farm.  I’ll expand more on that in my next post.

Its good to see Cincinnati and Dayton area companies starting to embrace open source as an alternative to custom application development.  As an IT Strategy consultant, I can say there is a place for both.

STAR BASE, Inc. just landed another Magento project.  I have written about Magento before and this post has links to several others.   These are not your father’s shareware packages. The packages we are working with are what I’m calling Commercial Open Source. 

I’m curious, why have you or your company not implemented an open source option?  Is it because the light at the end of the tunnel looks more like a train?  Maybe we’re just ahead of the curve again and I need a little bit of Patience.

 

In part one, I introduced the concept of “quantum superposition” and in part two I talked about qubits.  One of the things an IT strategy consultant should do, is make things that can be really quite complex and turn them into something practical.  Today I’m continuing the topic of Quantum computing.

Quantum computing also offers the means of making our communications and business transactions far more secure than they are today. Quantum cryptography exploits several remarkable effects of “quantum entanglement.” One of these is the ability to generate pairs of utterly unique and unbreakable keys. Basically, two random but identical particle keys can be created using entanglement. Since reading a quantum particle alters it, any effort to eavesdrop on communication is detected and that communication is either disrupted or ended.

Using this technology, we can create completely secure communications networks. Recently, Toshiba’s R&D labs announced the successful testing of quantum cryptography over fiber-optic networks.

IT Solutions based upon Quantum computing will not only change Cincinnati and Dayton, but the entire world.  How is this going to happen?  I wish I knew exactly how it is going to play out.  I’m still waiting on my flying car!

 

In part 1 of this post, I talked about the 80’s television show Quantum Leap, that wasn’t the point of the post. It is fun to imagine traveling around in time; but then again, I digress.   In part one, I introduced the concept of “quantum superposition”; big words, even for an IT strategy consultant.

Have you heard of the particle wave theory? In practical terms, it means that bizarre and counterintuitive effects occur on very small scales, and they can be harnessed.

This “quantum superposition” effect will, for example, will transform how we do “computer math.”  Currently, everything done by computers is in binary. The smallest piece of information a computer handles, the bit, is either a one or zero. A quantum computer, though, would be able to store and work with number systems other than binary.

This means computers would become exponentially more powerful because each “quantum bit” (qubit) could store a much greater range of numbers than the two that binary math restricts us to. Imagine a laptop with the computing power of the world’s 10 most powerful supercomputers. Then you begin to grasp the potential of quantum computing.

Designing chips and IT infrastructure to take advantage of “higher level” math than binary is years away.  The more immediate impact will be in storage.  Most application developers know that 8 bits make up a byte or 1 character.  What if a qubit could hold many bytes or characters?  

Next time, I will share another quantum idea.

 

For several years now STAR BASE, Inc. has been delivering open source IT Services in Cincinnati and Dayton.  I don’t know, but maybe we are IT consulting trend setters for Cincinnati.  Seems I have seen quite a bit in the last week about open source.

This is not the first time I have written about open source. In a previous post, I talked about Magento e-commerce.  I just saw this article about Magento.  As my fellow STAR BASE, Inc. IT strategy consultant, Matt Warman says, "come on in, we’re open."

Open source can substantially lower your cost of application development services.  You know what?  “It don’t get better than this”.

This week I am in Washington DC at a Jenzabar conference with a customer learning about IT strategies and IT solutions for higher education.  One of the partially completed tasks that I had not completed before I left was a switch of Star Base, Inc’s wireless service.  We had been with the company whose tag line is the title of this post for 15 years.  Yet I have another year to go on my contract. (Go Figure.)

We are in process of switching to the local wireless company and so I have both phones.  I didn’t want to cutover on Friday before the holiday weekend and also be out of town on top of that.   For now I can call out and use almost all the features of my new phone and service.  Inbound calls still use the old phone and its fully functional as well.   That puts me in a unique position to test the coverage of both services side by side.

So far I am pretty happy with my choice.  One big concern was how would the coverage be outside my home area.  I was a passenger for a good part of the trip because I was riding along with the customer.  That gave me time to see how the services stacked up in different parts of the route.  Even though the national company touts its network.  The local company’s signal strength was equal to or greater than the national one each time I checked.

In my next post I will detail the services and features that I have used.

I’m taking a break from the usuall IT strategy, IT solutions and application development.  I seem to have gotten behind on writing, since I have had two four day work weeks back to back.  Last week was the annual Circuit golf outing and STAR BASE, Inc. sponsored a hole again this year.  I usually play in these events and have a great time.  I have very high standards for those that play golf with me.  The first requirement is that you have a set of clubs; the second is that you know which end to hang on to.  

I think I’m going to change that first requirement to own a set of clubs.  A few years ago these requirments almost got me in trouble.  One person in my group didn’t actually own his clubs, he borrowed them and he knew which end to hang on to, because he watched Happy Gilmore the night before.  (He had not actually played before).  It was a long day.

But I digress, this year I decided I could network more effectively by staying at our hole and meeting all the golfers.  We gave out small cards that say “Everyday I play like a Champion!”  I swear if you repeat that affirmation everyday, it will take 2 strokes off of your game.  If you want one of these laminated cards, let me know.   If you want to play golf with me and actually own a set of clubs, I’m open for that as well!
 

I have written several posts that have talked about various IT strategies.  More often than not, we practice what we preach.  Star Base, Inc has been around for almost 18 years, so we would fall into what I would call a “mature company” category. 

I have always been determined not to be the cobbler’s children with no shoes, so we have invested in systems over the years.  Our CRM system was starting to show its age and even though business is down, I decided to invest in a new system.  Our new system is actually more than a CRM; it’s a fully integrated HRM (Human Resource Management) and accounting system as well. 

We are still learning about all the capabilities, but a couple that I think are really powerful are resume parsing and email capture.   Part of our business is IT staffing and that requires us to track a lot of resumes.  Our new system automatically parses IT skills out and creates a profile for the person.   It also monitors our email; any message received from someone in our system is automatically logged for that contact. 

Cincinnati and Dayton tend to be more conservative than other parts of the country.  Because of this, a lot of companies tend to have older IT solutions.  Could new web application development give you a competitive advantage that would allow you to leapfrog?

Saturday morning 8:30 am:  The phone rings, I answer, “Hello”.    Eric, my son who spent the night at a friends house says, “I’m getting ready to leave, I’ll be home before 9:00.  “Ok”, I reply, “see you then.”

8:45am: The phone rings again, I see that it is Eric’s cell number.  Now what does he want this time I thought, I answer, “Yes”.   “Dad, I’ve been in an accident”.  “What happened!!?”  “Someone pulled out in front of me and I ran into them.”  “Are you hurt?” “No, but I think the car is totaled.”  “Why do you think that?”  “Because both air bags went off and the hood is pushed up pretty good.”   “Uh Oh, is anyone else hurt?”  “No”.   “Call the police and I will be right there. “   “We already did”.  

Fortunately, there were no injuries that we are aware of and the other driver had good insurance.  I can’t decide if its fortunate or not that I am experienced in dealing with how to negotiate an insurance claim. 

So what does my exchange have to do with IT consulting or IT Strategy?  Plenty, it illustrates that the unexpected can happen at any time.  Check out this IT infrastructure post.

I was recently out of the office for eight days on a cruise to the Eastern Caribbean.  While out of the office, I did not have access to e-mail and quite frankly, really did not want to have access.   As the owner of an IT consulting company in Cincinnati, I get plenty of e-mail.  I estimate that I get about 70 real e-mails a day.  A lot of these are IT strategy and IT consulting related, our spam service does a pretty good job of eliminating spam.  On Monday morning, my inbox had over 700 unread messages in it.

So today I thought I would talk about strategic ways of dealing with e-mail.  Yes, one way is the delete button.  I know one person that told me they simply delete everything in the inbox and figured that if there was something important there, the sender would eventually let them know.  But rather than delete everything, I like the strategic use of the delete button. 

The first thing is to know about the type of mail that you received.  My e-mail, typically falls into these categories: e-mail from customers or fellow Starbase, Inc. associates, time sensitive newsletters, list-serve messages, and other miscellaneous.  

My e-mail client has the ability to color code messages, so messages from Starbase, Inc. associates and customers are color coded, so I better see them and not accidently delete them.  I typically look at these first.  

The biggest key to effectively dealing with a lot of email is to group the messages into blocks.  To help group these messages together, I sort my inbox various ways.  Sorting by sender helps me delete mail very quickly from senders that I don’t care to read.   Sorting by subject, helps me deal with the list serve messages.  If there is a subject that I don’t care to read, I can deal with those messages in a block as well.

Once I have eliminated the messages I don’t care to open, I can more effectively deal with the remaining messages. 

You guys have nothing to worry about, we're professionals…Professional what?  I think that is a great line from Ferris Bueller's Day Off.  I thought of it when I was looking at this post.   In it the author makes the point that is better to hire a IT professional sometimes rather than doing it yourself.    His rationale is that most companies are not in the application development business, so why try and internally do something that is outside your core competency.

Here are some reasons that you might want to bring in an IT Consultant.

1. Knowledge and Experience - The key advantage that an IT Consultant brings to the table is that they have a diverse amount of training and education that is expensive to hire in-house. They may also bring certifications to the table that gives them more credibility and knowledge about ways to improve your company’s use of technology.

2. Strategic Involvement - An IT Consultant could begin as a consultant for you and will investigate your current use of technology and will present you with a wide variety of options for improving your use of technology. Often, they will know more about what kind of options are out there and will have the ability to quickly identify with your business and help you choose the right solution.  Wellness Check anyone?

3. Custom Software Solutions - The ideal solution for your company will be something that is unique and works better for you than anyone else. A good IT Consultant will have the ability to either combine different software packages to best meet your needs or design and write a custom piece of software that is best for your company. In either case, they will have the ability to expertly match your processes with the software’s functionality, giving you the results that you’ve been striving for.  Open Source Solutions could work well.

4. Implementation - Unfortunately, selecting the right software is only half the battle. You must be able to implement the software and train your staff on the proper way to use the software. At STAR BASE we call this mentoring.

5. System Analysis - If you’ve already got a software package that meets your needs and are just looking for a couple of ways to manipulate your current software to improve effectiveness, an IT Consultant can help. They have a diverse knowledge and understanding of software and have the ability to work with a variety of packages, find ways to improve them, and find solutions for your company.  
 

In weak economic conditions, your company’s decision makers need the ability to understand how the company is performing against its targets. They simply do not have the time to sift through stacks of reports to find out what’s right – or wrong.  By linking applications, processes and information technology support together any organization will be able to measure exactly how they are performing against their targets.

The management team of any organization uses dashboards, gauges, charts and other graphical elements to translate complex information into a dynamic view of business conditions.  Is it possible to take this same approach when it comes to mapping IT’s relevance to the business targets of the organization?  The short answer is absolutely, but one must start with a plan and that plan should begin with an IT Wellness Check™.

In the IT consulting industry we find too many organizations that try to piecemeal their information technology systems together.  The problem with this is the mere fact that everyone everywhere is dependent on technology, and in this environment, every CIO and IT manager must know that their IT departments are in line with the business goals of the organization.  In these times of economic downturn downturn IT departments are one of the first departments to be cut.  In many cases, this results in the slowdown of production and contributes to missing the business targets of the organization.

An IT Wellness Check™ protects against economic challenges by shoring up internal operations to ensure the entire organization is running at peak efficiency.  IT is a vital part of any organization's internal operations, and a proper IT strategy is critical for IT departments to gain insight and to connect operational details to business drivers.  The IT Wellness Check™ is your business plan to make sure there are no inefficiencies, that you are operationally sound and that there is less chance that your budgets and your department will get cut.  That application development services project that you are trying to get approved will have a better chance of acceptance if you can show exactly how it relates to the business goals of the organization.

Remember, non-technical people often do not realize the consequences of the actions they take when they cut budgets and staff.  It is our job as responsible information technology professionals to make sure we are always operating at peak efficiency and paint the picture for upper management that shows why specific people, applications or IT infrastructure are necessary to assist them in meeting the business targets of the organization.
 

It’s Friday, so why don’t we take a break form IT Strategy, IT consulting and IT staffing talk.  Last week I had the opportunity to attend the annual Leadership Luncheon at Cincinnati Christian University.  I’m on the president’s advisory board at CCU and had it not been for that, I may not have known about this wonderful annual event.  Ben Utecht was one of the speakers.  Something that I didn’t know is that he is a terrific singer.  One of his aspirations is to be on American Idol.

If you are in a leadership position in Cincinnati, I strongly encourage you to attend this event next year.

 

Wednesday I wrote a blog on the new role of IT Today.  Ironically I was reading a blog on CIO magazine today and read an article by Thomas Wailgum on Why_the_recession_is_marginalizing_CIOs.  Thomas took a different path than I chose in my blog but the message remain the same, CIOs and IT personnel must continue to make themselves relevant or they will risk becoming a victim of knee jerk reaction from organizations looking to down size in this downturn economy.

I have written before that any one in the information technology world must come to gripes with the fact that upper manage and business as a whole does not understand the technical world not do they try to.  For so long information and IT related work tasks were simply thrown over the wall and it has up to the IT director to make some sense of it and to make sure that everyone was taken care of throughout the enterprise.

Well, the new edict if focused on strategic alignment of the enterprise and business processes and methodologies and how they relate to the over all mission of the organization.

Business application development must focus on the business and not the technology.  IT directors and application development specialist must understand that they must use technology to assist their organization to reach their goals and objectives in a quick efficient manner.  To not do so makes you vulnerable and expendable. Be proactive instead of reactive and you will make yourself more valuable and more relevant to your organization.  Everyone is being asked to do more with less and IT departments and the personnel that work within an IT department are no different.

Develop the attitude that you must continually push your capabilities and ability to think outside of the box through the creation of new process and methodologies to enable your organization to gain a competitive advantage.

Remember, think business first, technology second and ways that technology can empower your organization to continually reach their business goals and objective.  More important you will continue to be relevant and valuable to your organization and will not have to concern yourself with down sizing and having the rest of the organization minimizing the role of the CIO.
 

Enterprises will soon recognize that IT is an organizational asset, not simply an organizational structure. Senior leadership will embrace that their understanding of IT and the ability to apply this knowledge in imagining future possibilities is essential to extracting greater value from IT-enabled initiatives.  In addition, there will be broad-based acceptance that day-to-day business operations are dependent on IT and that the costs and risks are too high to continue to place the burden of responsibility solely on the CIO and the IT team.

I believe IT will transition from being the sole provider of the asset to enabling the IT capabilities of others in the enterprise.  Application development projects will no longer be centrally controlled but will be part of an entire enterprise-wide solution.  IT department will become enablers not the central focal point of technology.  Information technology consulting services will need to meet the needs of the entire organization not simply the IT department.  The dedicated IT staff of the past will need to ensure that information technology is applied in direct support of the business strategy to help the business to compete and grow while outperforming their competition.

IT business solutions will shift from servicing to coaching on the proper solutions based upon the company need.  IT departments will grow into corporate leaders instead of trying to be the one stop shop for all technology products and services.  Leaders from each department will be accountable for their own needs.  They will be accountable for meeting the needs of the business and that includes technology.  Once business leaders achieve their goals by increasing their knowledge of systems, business processes, and information and how to identify justify and execute IT-enabled change, organizations will operate as a truly integrated enterprise instead of a company of soloed departments.  Once this type of approach is embrace, communication will improve, measurable progress will be seen and a true integrated enterprise will be realized.  

I read today that unemployment has risen to 7.6%.  Yes, its official – we are in a recession.  However, that does not mean there isn’t opportunity because there is.  If everyone believed everything the press is saying our economy does not have a chance and the United States is going to cease to exist.

I also read today that the U.S. government is going to re-visit its parameters for H-1B Visas because they are being used by recruiting body shops rather than giving foreign nationals the real opportunity that they seek.  This means that application developers and specialist are going to be able to make up ground that they have lost to foreign nationals in the past.

My suggestion is for developers to increase their skill-set now before the economy begins to get worse.  Information technology consulting has never been a steady business it always has had peaks and valleys.  When the economy is good projects are plentiful.  When it starts to decline projects usually come to a grinding halt.  But is you have multiple skills it decrease your odds of becoming a statistic.

Organizations try to do more and more internally rather than outsource it when the economy begins to falter.  The more skills a person has the better chances one has to stay employed.  This holds true for IT staffing, development and consulting.  Additionally, when a developer or infrastructure architect can show an organization how to safe time, investment and people through the implementation of their solution they will endear themselves to that particular organization.

Good information technology strategy can more than pay for itself in this economy.  Organizations everywhere are dependent on technology and they need processes to become dynamically automated so they can accomplish more with less while the move towards models of efficiency that will contribute to the productivity of the organization.

Make it your mission to learn more applications and methodologies that can greatly increase the productivity of any company.  To do this is to build value for the organization and you by ensuring there will always be a job for those that are willing to innovate and create a better way.  

This is your opportunity.  Make it happen!

 In Part 1, I introduced the concept of segmenting IT solutions providers.  In this part we will look at the criteria on how you might do that.  Now for the IT consultant’s favorite phrase, it depends.  It depends upon the type of provider.  For IT staffing, you may look at the ratio of resumes submitted to the number of candidates interviewed to the number of candidates placed.  For an IT application development provider, you might look at project costs or more importantly overruns.  For hardware service providers, you may look at time from initial call to response, the number of call backs. 

Once you have established your metrics, the most obvious thing to me would be to communicate to the providers what your criteria is.  But that’s not always the case, I know of a situation where a company was looking to eliminate some of their providers.  When a manager at the company was asked how they would go about making the decision on who stays and who goes, the response was “we will use a scoring system on criteria that we have developed”.  When asked if they could share the criteria, the answer was “no, we can’t do that”.

It’s critically important that IT solutions providers know what they are being measured on.  It’s the only why a supplier can find out what they need to improve on.  Every business should be interested in improvement.  By segmenting suppliers, you have an opportunity to get great feedback from your strategic suppliers.  It also gives you an opportunity to give feedback to your suppliers.  I know that’s something I would appreciate!