Many companies leave IT to last and treat it as an expense and not an investment. The guarantees that your business solutions will hit the technology wall. Many companies have had one person that knew computers better than anyone else, so they were made into the company’s “IT Person”. However, what you get is an IT person that has experience exclusive to your situation and only knows the world within your company walls. They may not be able to provide the value that external experience gives. They may even be reluctant to change and like to stay within the confines of what they know, blindly creating limitations.
It doesn’t take long before stale business solutions hit the Technology Wall.
Things become outdated, slow…and frustration ensues. But even more frustrating, is the thought of the cost to replace everything. So, many companies limp along replacing things when only forced due to physical failure or some unplanned event (which always seem to happen at the worst moments).
The world of technology has changed dramatically over the last several years.
Business solutions are moving online and doing so in a way that makes it easy for companies to move to cutting edge solutions, smashing through that technology wall without having to front huge piles of cash.
They take the headaches of hardware and building custom software and give you fast , readily available frameworks to build your infinite scale-able solutions. They take you from old and tired to new and explosive usually with less money and simplified roll-outs. The money you spent on expensive backups and the people needed to run them go away. Software updates are automatic and you always have the latest versions. It is equivalent to driving a shiny new car every day.
This, of course creates new concerns. How do you even get your head around moving from your dusty broken-down systems to new fresh online (cloud) systems without interrupting business?
Whenever I start talking to business owners about this they immediately go into solution mode
Whenever I start talking to business owners about this they immediately go into solution mode and start almost every sentence with “What I need is..” or “Can we do it this way?…”
In my earlier years, I would spend hours listening and trying to build business solutions exactly the way my clients asked for them. After all, it was my job to give them what they wanted. Sometimes it worked, but many times it didn’t. The main reason why we came up short so often was the business owners didn’t have the experience with implementing technology and I didn’t understand what my job really was. It was not to give them what they wanted. It was to give them what they needed. So they only way I could provide the best business solutions was to understand the business problem and then use my expertise to give the business the best options. Once I started doing this, their success sky rocketed and my value soared.
By shifting the conversations with ownership to focus on the business problems and not the technical solutions, empowered the group to come up with the best solutions because everyone’s input is related to their expertise. I could understand the real problems and match them up with the best recommended business solutions.
Conclusion
The more the business can focus on business the better. Focus on explaining the business problem not what you think the solution should be. Let the technical expert bring their value to the business by letting them tell you what technology fits your business need. Have them lay out several business solutions and give you the final decision on what fits your needs the most. Ideally, once they understand the problem set, they can propose more than one solution, followed up with their overall recommendation.
