Recruiting an IT Consultant

The key to effectively managing data is to employ solutions that don’t simply collect information and provide raw storage. Rather, they should provide what Scavio calls “information logistics.”

“It’s having the right information at the right time, in its most usable form,” he says. “Our expertise is to understand the data we’re working with, how it works within the process of the company, and how we can enhance that process first.” Having the data stored electronically, rather than in filing cabinets, is then a beneficial byproduct, he adds.

For example, Hitec recently helped two local hospitals—one is a research hospital—merge their data. “In a research hospital, the value of that information is unbelievable,” Scavio says. Hitec helped the institutions file up to 20 years worth of critical data on line in a fully indexed format that’s accessible to researchers and others.

Such solutions can help businesses capitalize on their business intelligence and cut down on their logistics costs. “Now your data isn’t a burden,” Scavio says. “It’s an asset.”

Sometimes a business makes the mistake of letting IT priorities come before its operational priorities. “Generally speaking, businesses aren’t good at doing strategic plans,” says Nicholas Eian, owner of Endurant Business Solutions, a Minneapolis-based management and IT consulting firm. “So what happens is their IT people, who generally are pretty good at doing strategic plans, are driving what the business is going to do. And they’ll do strategic plans that, quite often, are totally inconsistent with where the business is going.”

Several years back, for example, Eian worked with a manufacturer in Michigan that made the aluminum shutter doors for three-and-a-half-inch floppy discs. The company was looking for a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, which integrates and automates many business practices, such as manufacturing, logistics, inventory, shipping, and accounting. The company believed its existing system was inhibiting its ability to accelerate production times and cut costs.

Eian, however, suspected that the company’s problems had less to so with its ERP system than with its inability to devise a competitive business strategy that accounted for changes in its marketplace. “So the discussion changed from, ‘Do you need a new ERP system?’ to ‘Do you need a new product line?’ Because that shutter door was going away—no one was going to be using those discs anymore,” Eian says. “So instead of rethinking the new ERP system, let’s instead rethink what your industry is doing and what your strategy will be.”

Today, Eian says, that company has a thriving new product line—and the same ERP system. “Think about your business goal—where you want to be,” he says. “Then consider how IT can help you run more effectively once you get there.”