Yeah, just go back to legal pads and abacuses….abaci…you know what I mean.
I read an interesting article in which a company fires its IT staff, outsources the labor, and moves to hosted and outsourced infrastructure. Before I actually make a point (yes there is a point to this), a little background perspective might be instructive.
IT and Accounting/Finance are often at odds with each other within an organization. There are many factors for this. Accounting is dumb and IT RULEZ!! Ahem, just kidding. Accounting is usually a very technology dependent group and in many situations CAN’T do their jobs without IT’s help and this can lead to tension and stress between the two. Also, CFO’s (as in the story) see IT expenses only as cost centers and don’t realize that IT should be a strategic asset of a company. Just between you and me, IT people don’t always have the best people skills, either.
Ok, on to my point. I think it’s great that this company was able to save over 60% on their IT budget. With 90 stores and a headquarters, they must have hundreds of users and I wonder about what THEY think about the changes. In short, it looks to me like this business is a bit large to have gone this route.
I’m a big believer in outsourcing for small business. I think that brings a real advantage in business by having predicable costs in IT. But I strongly believe as a business grows, there comes a tipping point where someone needs to have a hand on the tiller to steer the adoption and growth of technology. Could a consultant do this? Probably. It’s a rare consultant that will ever understand a business and it’s needs as well as a dedicated professional that works in that business every day.
Day 3 was a really good day and it kicked off with a great Keynote from Kevin Schofield of Microsoft Research. He gave an excellent presentation and showed off some of the things they are working on with their $5 billion R&D budget. Some of the VERY cool things he showed were the Worldwide Telescope project and some of the advances they’ve made with Microsoft’s Surface (a table-top touchscreen computer). He talked about “innovating our way out of recession”, which I really liked the sound of.
I also went to a session that covered Windows Essential Business Server which is a new product that fits in between Small Business Server and the full blown Windows Server products. I’ll be doing a comparison of these products soon which I will publish for your reading pleasure. (No seriously, I mean it this time.)
So I’m in New Orleans at Microsoft’s Business Solutions (aka Dynamics) annual conference, called Convergence. I’m here because of my day job, but I have been struck by how hard Microsoft is working to try to serve SMBs better that they have in the past. That’s not exactly a high bar to exceed, but they’re really working at it. I’ve mentioned Microsoft’s Online Services in the past, and CRM is one of the spaces that (it seems to me) they’re working overtime.
So what does that mean to a small business owner? Basically, it puts some really sophisticated tools in reach both from a financial stand point as well as a technical one. Not only is the software more reasonably priced, but you don’t need expensive hardware or technical people to run the thing.
This is certainly not an original idea or one that’s exclusive to Microsoft, but considering where they have come from as a company, I think their efforts in this area are commendable.
More to come…
