2007 TechNO Expo

What are your suggestions for simplifying or streamlining IT processes?


Jim Jungbauer
President
Hollstadt & Associates, Inc., Burnsville

First and foremost you want to focus on the business and see what the business needs are. If the business leader says, “I want to cut expenses” or “I want to be more efficient,” you need to then back up and have them define these terms: Which business expenses need trimming? What do they mean by becoming more efficient?

The easiest way to simplify the number of software titles or licenses you’re using is to see what the business needs are. Many times, the answer will start out as, “Let’s do a lockdown of the desktop.” I think if you sit down and meet with your business partners, you’d find that the one-off software titles they’ve used or the one-off software that they’ve chosen without involving IT tend to be solving problems that you could be solving with the software you already have in house.

If you step back and say, “What are we trying to do here?” or if your organization has really grown over time and no one has come back and taken a look at the business issues and the business problems you want to solve, you might see that you have five little silos in accounting, for example. The only way you can figure that out    is if you sit down and talk to the people doing the work.

If an organization acquires businesses and leaves each little accounting group on their own, and each one has their own software and then there’s a change in a law that says you need to do X with your financial software, each one of those little accounting areas has to make that change.

Christopher Taylor
President and CEO
Computer Integration Technologies, Inc., Woodbury

One of the main ways that a company can simplify its software landscape is through consolidation and consistency. For instance, if an organization employs a Microsoft SQL Server as their primary database and chooses to utilize standard database applications, that will simplify the landscape and complete a high percentage of their business.

From a personnel perspective, an organization can choose to work with a solid IT vendor that can accommodate their specific needs. We work with several organizations that have IT departments, and we provide them with help on specific projects or supplemental work. We also have several smaller clients who do not have full-time IT departments, and they choose to have us complete a good portion of their IT work, rather than hiring additional staff.

An organization should also purchase consistent equipment—that is, purchase high-quality equipment from the same manufacturers and the same or similar models. Ultimately, this makes the entire IT environment easier to support, which will decrease the number of IT hours that are needed.

Simplify the number of applications and core databases that your organization uses. This also goes back to the consistency piece, but if you have fewer applications and fewer databases, there will be fewer hours put into maintenance. Also, because there will be a smaller number of applications and databases, you will have an increased knowledge of your systems, and less time will be needed from a maintenance perspective.

Use an IT monitoring solution that will assist your organization in being proactive. Such a device might track system and device downtime and availability and data storage hurdles. Set up an internal helpdesk site using something like Microsoft SharePoint, which is a great internal collaboration application. You can use SharePoint to manage IT issues, track certain metrics, and act as a knowledge-sharing repository for internal documents.