I don’t know why it happens, but it’s often conceived in my line of work, that when I talk to someone about future works and plans I’m actually talking about spending their money. Immediately when I say we need to talk about what we’re doing over a set period I’m informed of the timing of the financial year end and budgets.. While I fully understand the importance of tailoring a solution around the needs of budgetary constraints (oh to work in a perfect world!), I’d also like to talk about what’s required and the potential savings we can make before I’m dismissed as wanting to spend yet more money..
Fact of the matter is, I’ve no interest in spending a companies money, as I don’t work on a commission basis, none of the technicians or consultants (as far as I am aware) within my company do so, we’re transparent in our pricing structure and any spend which takes place only takes into account the price of processing the orders.
It’s very easy to throw money at a problem and “make it go away”, but what’s difficult is ensuring that you can justify the amount of expenditure for each project. The only way you can effectively do that is complete project management and support as part of the deal.. a managed project and on going managed service, if you like, and as I work in a company that has people who specialise in arrangement of these deals, I’ve no interest in getting my hands dirty with such things.. I am here to support my users and ensure things are working correctly.
Of course with any project implementation, it’s key that those who support the users do so effectively and are in a position to ensure that any problems after the event can be dealt with, I’m very lucky. Without sounding to blow my own trumpet, I’m pretty good at support, and I’m fairly technically able.. I really need to be as I’m expected to support a multitude of users and systems as part of my role here. I also work with a great team, who are also able and good with users. I’ve worked in departments where users are not technically able, and I hate to say it, I’ve worked with people who are not user-centric with their focus; both present their own unique problems, but that’s for another post.. at another time.
Back to the point. Part of the work of a good IT Team is to ensure you’re using all the resources available to you as effectively as possible all of the time, this means keeping abreast of technology and ensuring you’re using it correctly, so when a problem presents you’ve the tools and experience to ensure you can overcome it.
And part of being a good team means keeping things up to date, and sometimes that means project work over downtime and staged work.
Ok.. who’s reading this right now and nodding?, how many of you work in a similar role and have to make sure that the Office Version that you’re licensed for is rolled out to all users? or gone through an OS or application revision? and how many of you also have to train those users on the “new” system?
That’s the sort of thing I’m talking about.. it doesn’t always cost money to keep things updated, but it takes time to make sure everyone can continue to do their job. This is really key and this is why we report to senior management to keep them informed.
It won’t cost you any more.. but you do need to know we’re doing it, because it effects your users.
, very simply I wanted a usable 185/60 R14 tyre fitting and the mess removed, provided the wheel had suffered no real damage. I was fairly lucky. For the most part (wires and canvas showing aside where it’d blown) the tyre held structure and protected the rim edge, no real damage was apparent, s0 I had the new tyre fitted.
