The DIY (do it yourself) movement has taken off with the advent of social media. Pinterest runs an entire business off of it! The two biggest drivers of DIY are saving money, and being creative. Neither of these are good reasons to DIY your corporate technology! The number of businesses STILL taking a DIY approach to technology planning and support is surprising, and costly.
Examples are everywhere. The marketing firm with gear from Best Buy (which is a great place to buy your HOME tech) storing all of their digital asset files without any backup. The manufacturing company that runs their ERP off a server that was “built” by the internal IT person and thus has no warranty or support when it crashes. The homegrown Excel solution for the sales reporting “system” that only one person understands.
These examples are driven by the need to DIY a solution on the cheap as the business was getting started. The cost of proper technology strategy and gear often shocks business execs as they grow past basic needs. The impulse is to figure out how to cobble together random products and services to accomplish a business result. This is DIY IT at its best!
The DIY approach has negative long-term consequences for your business, including:
The overhead of DIY in your business technology will impact your results very realistically. The first step to changing this is to find an outside partner to come in and benchmark your processes and systems against their standard roadmaps for your industry. This will highlight the areas that need attention to get your business back on track towards a more profitable and productive future!
We all love a good weekend project; make sure you do it at home!