Whether you're a business owner, a nonprofit director, or a manager, chances are you wear a lot of hats in your organization and one of them often leaves you scratching your head-IT. If you find yourself overseeing your organization's IT department without the technical knowledge, you're not alone. Managers are often asked to supervise IT with little or no technical training.
The good news is even non-technical managers can effectively manage IT. In fact, your organization actually needs a non-technical, business expertise to ensure the effectiveness of your IT team.
1. Leveraging Technology
As a non-technical manager overseeing IT, your primary value is your ability to see the organization's larger goals and to ensure that technology is being effectively used to reach them. Think of IT as a powerful leveraging tool to help you meet your business goals.
When the IT team suggests a new piece of hardware or software, don't simply ask, What will that technology do for us? Rather ask, What primary organizational goals will that technology help us achieve? In other words, always link the IT initiative to a business goal or definable outcome.
2. Proactively Budget for IT
To ensure technology is being effectively leveraged, budget for IT to keep costs low and return on investment high. Change your mindset from we'll just get computers fixed as needed and hope it doesn't cost too much to let's plan ahead for what costs will be required in order to maximize our return on investment (ROI) from technology this year.
In your budget, have a separate line item for each aspect of your IT infrastructure (for example: service, hardware, software, website, new technologies)- not just IT in general. This clarifies where the primary costs are and lets you plan ahead for new technologies and more
efficient systems.
Implement a reasonable computer replacement schedule. This will prevent high costs every six or seven years when computers start to die. Computers should be replaced every three years for high users and every five years for staff with less computer-centric roles.
3. Efficiency and Staff Training Key
Although your IT budget will depend on which technologies will meet your organization's specific goals, all organizations need efficiency. If you can leverage technology to save your employees even a measly 10 minutes per day, this will add up to 40 hours per year per employee in time saved. Multiply that over the entire organization and the financial impact becomes obvious.
Consider providing a second computer screen-or a dual monitor-to staff members that spend a large part of their time in multiple computer applications. A Microsoft research study showed that this generally results in a 9 to 50 percent increase in staff efficiency.
Also, provide advanced training to staff on software programs they use regularly. Regular use does not mean the programs are used efficiently and effectively. And consider having your IT team install web filtering to block staff from using time-wasting websites. OpenDNS (www.opendns.com)
provides a free solution.
4. Conduct Annual IT Audits
To effectively oversee IT as a non-technical manager, you must understand the quality of your IT infrastructure, including security, disaster recovery, efficiency and stability. Have an IT audit done by a third party who can provide you with an unbiased comprehensive map of your systems (both weaknesses and strengths), along with custom recommendations for improving return on investment on IT.
Decrease costs by using free IT audits. Although some IT firms charge fees for system reviews, many provide audits at no cost. These audits are generally created for non-technical managers, so they should be easy to understand and written in layman's terms.
Having your current IT manager or IT firm submit an annual report in addition to a third-party audit is also something to consider. The annual report should outline their perspectives on where the systems stand. This can be a helpful comparison tool, and can give your current IT team (whether in-house or outsourced) the opportunity to step back and carefully consider the big picture and where improvements could be made.
Although you may not know how to engineer a server or code a website, you can be the most equipped person to see the big picture, connect IT to your organization's top goals, and lead your IT team to maximum effectiveness.
Ryan Barton is president of Mainstay Technologies, an IT services and web development firm in Laconia. He can be reached at 603-524-4774, info@mstech.com or by visiting www.mstech.com.