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Do you still think the world is flat?

Digital natives will not hang around long with a company that still things the world is flat!  This shift of mentality is real and happening now.  Make sure that you are keeping an open mind about how technology can improve your productivity, profits, and results.

If you agree with any of the following statements about your company’s technology posture, it may be time to evaluate a technology partnership or a shift in overall delivery of those services.

Technology outsourcing is “expensive”…

This is one of the best myths out there!  This is often another way of saying, “I don’t want to deal with finding the right technology partner, and I’ll just stick with the same ‘ol way of doing it”.  This occurs in companies that become comfortable (more on that HERE.) with the status quo and see technology as an expense instead of an asset.

In the majority of situations outsourcing is more cost-effective on an absolute dollars basis than the STAFFING of your internal IT group.  So this means you can get an entire Strategy, Standards, Service partnership for less than the HR cost of your IT group.  This has nothing to do with “how good” your IT folks may be, and everything to do with the fact those roles are no longer cost-effective internally.

We need someone onsite

What if the server crashes and we are down for hours waiting on someone to get here  This is wrong on so many levels.  First, let’s start with, what if the server didn’t crash?  Or what is there wasn’t even a server?  There is an interesting cycle that goes something like this:

Servers are purchased –>> servers are not put on a proper hardware lifecycle –>>  servers crash –>> internal IT rushes in to save the day –>>  due to this, IT justifies the purchase of new servers –>> repeat

A technology partner will have an IT Roadmap that eliminates hardware/software that is on-premise and shifts to a services model.  So guess what, no more five alarm server crashes!  And no waiting for anyone to come onsite.

We have been with the same group forever and would never change

Technology changes A LOT and so it is important that your technology partner NOT CHANGE a lot, that would be too much!  The words that are key here are “forever” and “never”.  I’m not a fan of switching out vendors/partners due to minor issues or price only.

I am a fan of evaluating the performance of my vendor/partners over time (3-5 years) and making sure that we are continue to get value from them.  This is as simple as talking internally with your teams about the value the partner is delivering.  No need to spend a bunch of time with a complex re-bid process.

The “never” part of this usually goes back to being comfortable and not wanted to spend any time improving this area of the business.  See HERE for more!

This is not a history lesson, BUT the world was known as round way before  Columbus set sail.  See here for more.

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