- touch everyday business use technology - things you probably did know - but were not sure. I shall excite you to put them into practice.
- focus on the benefits businesses earn out of IT.
- define deliverables that a specific technology can provide.
- provide information that your IT provider never told you (and probably never will).
- work on Simplifying Complex IT so that you can profit from IT.
Who is this blog targeted at?
- Business owners, particularly those whose businesses currently do not warrant need for a CIO - Chief Information Officer - but want to grow big enough to require one.
- Entrepreneurs who are technology savvy, but want to focus on their business rather than on IT can keep a check on what their IT vendor is delivering and to know if there is a better way.
- IT professionals who double up as infrastructure professionals, to extract all benefits of the technology they spend for but are never delivered.
Fundamentals:
Information Technology - IT as I shall refer it now on, was brought to life for 3 fundamental functions:
- Speed.
- Accuracy.
- Ease.
Had IT been true to its fundamentals, these should have been delivered to make life easier and for businesses to generate profit, however...
- Do businesses benefit from IT?
- Does IT simplify business?
- Does IT increase profitability?
- Does IT reduce complexity?
Businesses are making more and more use of IT and are benefiting. But these benefits are delivered sometimes at a hefty price. Even the simplest of IT decision making is made so complex that businesses need efficient, updated and balanced IT professionals to...
- Correctly assess needs.
- Identify a Best-Fit technology.
- Procure, Implement and Configure infrastructure.
- Implement core solution and train users to extract benefits.
- Keep IT up and running so that businesses keeps running.
Just like the fable where Arab tent owner compassionately permits his camel to keep its head inside the tent as protection from the night desert chill and the camel ultimately occupies the entire tent and nudges the Arab out, IT has nudged out the purpose of businesses by guzzling down profits before generating them and at times, never generating them.
Ask any business owner if he wants computers, and he will reply that all he wants to do with computers is ability to do business faster and better, easily. A business owner cares not for features, he wants specific benefits; he cares not for IT, he wants profit. He doesn't care about what technology can do, he is interested in knowing what technology can do FOR HIM.
Vendor partners who do not understand the customer problem, do not create a win-win dupe the business owners to create an ill-feeling of being cheated and are largely responsible for the apathy and scorn for IT.
How often have you seen someone resigned to spending for IT without being sure about its application benefits? Have you seen someone forced to read huge technology documents that say everything but provide no understanding? How many times have you seen someone frantically google'ing for cryptic acronyms mentioned in IT investment proposals?
- It is perhaps time that IT plays the role IT was meant to - improve business profit.
- It is certainly time that IT community stops using cryptic Three Letter Acronyms. They give creeps. Funnily Three Letter Acronym also have an acronym - TLA.
- It should be made an absolute law to deliver benefits instead of features.
Even the words "Benefit" & "Profit" are not complete without IT and I sincerely believe I will make a difference to your life and business, delivering you BenefIT and ProfIT the same way as my company Fortune Grecells Private Ltd has to many.
Keep IT FIT:
Kshitij M Kotak,
Prof IT
