IT Managers or Directors
You may be the manager or director of one information technology professional or a team of IT professionals. That responsibility may be one of many hats you wear or it may be your full-time job. You may be well-versed in information technology or you may rely on your staff. You may even be a contracted CFO or controller.
Do Any of these Situations Resonate with You?
- IT resources are required for a limited time or project. You're in charge of a team of information technology professionals. A project arises where your team doesn’t have the expertise. You could send them to training but then there still is a learning curve in applying that knowledge to your unique environment and the timely trial and error process that lack of experience brings.
- You're not sure what should you be able to expect from your IT staff. You’re the person in charge of a system administrator. Often projects and other requests aren’t getting done in the timeframes you expect. In most cases, this individual is performing well; however, you’re uncertain as to whether he or she has the qualifications for some of the assignments and the complexity of your network. Your system administrator may say the system is secure, but how do you know?
- Difficulties arise when your system administrator is unavailable. Your system administrator is ill during a critical time or goes on a well-deserved vacation and you don't want to interrupt his or her badly needed relaxation with work-related issues. However, you have very limited knowledge and don't know what else to do if something should go wrong. There may be no documentation on your systems except what's in your system administrator's mind.
- Long-term strategy or planning is lacking. Your team has time for the day-to-day support issues and projects, but there’s no strategic planning or budgeting. You are unsure of how to tie technology into the business goals because management views the computer systems as an expense rather than a tool to facilitate business objectives.
- A second opinion is crucial. You’re not an expert in the field of Information Technology, but it’s your responsibility to manage the system administrator. He or she is always asking for the latest upgrades and products, but you’re not sure if the investment makes business sense.
- You question the effectiveness of IT in-house support versus outsourcing. You’re wondering if you shouldn’t outsource everything. Your in-house system administrator has just resigned. You wonder if it would be cost effective to contract system administrator services or even have some or all applications hosted elsewhere? Or, you've been outsourcing and wonder if it's time to hire or bring your applications back in-house.
Achieving Success
IT Managers or directors who find success working with Micro Visions share these characteristics:
- Value in-depth experience and knowledge from a technical and business standpoint.
- Invest their company’s resources wisely by understanding long-term strategy.
- Appreciate the value of planning, not just reacting. Prefer to prevent problems.
Next Step
Now that you know with whom we work, the various issues that many IT managers or directors may experience and what characters they often share, find out more about how we work.