Strategic Technology

I was going to try and cover the below referenced article in one post – length has relegated that to two! this is part 1….

A thought provoking article by Isaac Sacolick Writing at the Engineering News Record, titled; Tablets, Laptops and Virtual Desktops: Trends for CIOs to Watch

The era of planning a simple replacement of corporate computers every three years is over. Alternative devices and technologies need to be considered by IT leadership within their strategic planning processes – and soon. These devices have the ability to effect improvements in everything from productivity to employee engagement.

To contribute my own point of view, I actually want to start at the bottom of Mr. Sacolik’s work; at something many managers at the larger end of the small to medium enterprise rarely consider;

..it’s an ideal time to develop an application asset database, segment users based on usage patterns and then catalog platform requirements on the more critical applications

One Tech To Bind Them?

Within our business technology, one size does not fit all.  The technology assets required by engineering professionals, which could include development environments for software engineering or CAD (computer aided design) in other realms of engineering, is not the same as technology assets required by mobile professionals, which again is not the same as the technology assets needed by administrative staff who may be using primarily office productivity software.

Asset And Service Catalogs…. & Roles?

If you catalog all IT assets, which includes software, and the computing resources, platforms and tools required for each – and then add in the services required to support them, you have now given yourself the ability to create workforce asset and service ‘seats’ or roles. And these roles can be a powerful management tool;

Ask yourself from a management and financial standpoint;

I have 400 computing devices scattered around? Or all my computing devices are managed via 6 roles, or seat types.

Which sounds easier?

From IT asset acquisition, deployment, through on boarding new employees, to supporting service levels, throughout your IT asset life-cycle, dealing with these roles or seat types can tremendously reduce time and cost.

To give one example; you have defined one seat or role as ‘Mobile-Executive’. Through your research and planning, you have determined that all persons that meet this criteria, or role, require ultra mobile computing power, general office productivity tools, secure remote access capability, general reporting from key corporate applications, cellular provisioning, and critical support turnaround for device failure while travelling.

The Seat

You are hiring a new executive to fill the Senior Vice President, Sales, seat starting in two weeks, which of the following most likely describes the current process in your business?

a) Sales and IT negotiate everything listed above one by one via meetings or email, hoping nothing is omitted or;

b) We usually perform the productivity loss method of trial and error, having our SVP spending his time on the phone with IT getting resources – versus on the phone with prospective customers or;

c) Our IT team receives an IT Service request that simply states; ‘..all requirements for role ‘Mobile-Executive’ for …….’

(as a side note, for organizations with a higher IT maturity level the services portion can support your IT SLA costing or billing initiatives as well.)

Defining your IT Asset catalog, and defining the roles required in your business, will let you improve your understanding of exactly what roles can be improved by the different assets or technologies Mr. Sacolik writes about, and will assist you in looking strategically where these assets would be most suitable for, as;

Each can open up several new options in outfitting the organization to do work faster, better and with fewer costs.

Note: this concept is not new – global IT outsourcing firms have used this concept for years, as ‘per seat’ margins would be totally devastated if for every one of 10,000 managed devices hours of meetings were required for configuration and deployment.

Update, Part 2  is here