Beam Me Up Scotty
As the Starship Enterprise explores the final frontier, Scotty and his engineers, foreheads wet with perspiration, toil in the hull of the ship while working tirelessly on the ships systems.
Scotty is the CIO of the Enterprise, and when he and his team aren’t literally putting out fires, he is usually experimenting on how to make the ships systems better, faster, more efficient. He and the captain know that innovative solutions are the key to survival in the final frontier.
You can think of your IT department as the engine room of your company. If your IT guys and gals are spending too much time putting out fires, doing break-fix work, and not enough time thinking about how to make your company more efficient and profitable, then your company is as sluggish as a starship stuck in a tractor beam when it should be operating at warp-speed.
How to Turn Your IT Department into a Growth and Profit Center
1. Avoid the “We’ll involve IT later” axiom at all costs! Keeping your IT department out of the business planning loop is a costly mistake for two reasons:
First, creating a solution without IT’s involvement force’s them to retrofit a solution. That is, you’re forcing IT to fit a square peg into a round hole. It can be done, but it usually requires a lot of time and a lot of money.
Second, without IT’s involvement at the top level you are eliminating viable options.
Instead, bring your IT team to the table so they can help you streamline workflow, reduce unnecessary costs from planning mishaps, and increase your profitability.
2. Create an IT Infrastructure that’s innovative and profit focused. Every company has IT expenditures that are required to keep the “lights on”. But what if you could streamline and minimize those costs? That is, hardware replacement, software licensing, hosting, and security management?
And more importantly, what if you could reinvest those resources into innovative solutions that will give you an edge over your competitors, help you serve your clients better, and create sales and growth velocity?
Have your IT department provide you with a detailed cost analysis of your current and future expenditures.
They should also provide you with recommendations on how to reduce expenditures and plan your IT infrastructure for company growth. For example, eliminating your capital expenditures by going to a full or hybrid virtual/cloud environment. Or creating a business continuity plan that will help you reduce your insurance premiums.
3. Take a walk in both worlds. It’s ironic that IT is synonymous with communications when the average “C” level executive has no idea what the tech guy or gal is talking about.
To power up your profits with IT, the head of the IT department must be able to walk in both worlds. That is, he or she should be proficient in both information technology and understanding business processes.
Ideally, this person has project management experience, can apply technology to streamline your business, AND be to explain to you exactly what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, and how it will impact your company…all over a cup of joe.
Want more ideas on how to turn your IT department into a profit center? Contact us at 866-680-3388 or email sales.dept@consilien.com.
Image credit Photo by Stefan Cosma on Unsplash