How do we work out what IT equipment to keep and what to get rid of?

We never seem to throw anything out. How do we work out what IT equipment to keep and what to get rid of?

Do you have one of those workplaces where old computers hang around indefinitely, possibly with their insides hanging outside the box? What about old servers that are well past their use-by-date, but somehow limp on and on and on?

If this sounds like you, it's probably time to clear your workplace of old IT equipment...

One of the best things you can do with your old equipment is to get it to the recyclers promptly. There may be components of your machines that can be reused before they age any further. The remaining materials can then be broken down and recycled too. Remember, the longer your old equipment sits in a corner or cupboard, the less likely it is to be of value to anyone.

Have a look for a local recycler of PCs, but make sure they have sound environmental policies and won't ship parts to third world countries for manual destruction – creating toxic environments in the process.

While hoarding IT equipment might not seem like a big problem, it actually is – because, more often than not, it indicates a bigger problem at a strategic planning level. I know this because old computers take up space, use power and slow people down. There is no justification for making use of old PCs unless you are a not-for-profit organisation using voluntary labour to repair and operate the PCs. I say this because computers are a productivity tool, and when they are no longer saving an employee time they are counter-productive.

We still think of computers as expensive, which is a throwback to the early days of IT when a PC cost $5,000, and a salary was $30,000. Today, the median Australian salary is approximately $55,000 and a computer costs $1,000. So, with the shift in cost ratio from 1:6 to 1:55, getting the best possible performance and productivity from our people by investing in technology is important.

Recent reports have shown that Australians are 'among the most overworked people in the world', but unfortunately we are not the most productive. It's likely that our hesitancy to spend money on productivity tools has us working harder – not smarter.

But, how do you know when to throw IT equipment out (of course, by this we always mean 'recycle it'!)? This is either a simple issue, or a complex one – depending on your point of view. If you can handle the idea that IT equipment should be maintained to a high standard to maximise your staff productivity, PCs should be replaced automatically every three to four years. To achieve this, you'll need to set up a replacement schedule – and stick to it.

This replacement schedule should incorporate an assessment of all equipment at the three-year mark, during which a decision regarding the equipments future should be made. If the equipment is performing well, keep it for a fourth year. If it is slowing down or has become unreliable, replace it. This does not work so well in small businesses where additional expense is often avoided to the detriment of productivity – but the rules still apply, and should be factored into budgets.

Storage, PCs, servers, network speed and the like are all worth spending money on. This message has finally reached the marketplace, and we are reading this week how PC sales have surged by 24% as people gear up for the growing economy. There is also growing demand for storage and backup solutions. Storage has grown, but the backup of large amounts of data is causing problems for a lot of businesses. There are solutions for this, but they are all expensive. Again, this is why careful planning and budgeting are important, so that storage doesn't grow faster than the backup capability.

Often, I see IT advisors who are great technicians with a poor sense of business, who truly believe that their job is to save their clients money by not spending anything extra on IT equipment. These guys run around patching old PCs all day, and feel like heroes for the savings they are making. They have no sense of how hard they are working to keep old equipment running, and think nothing of all-night sessions spent trying to save a dying server. But they also have no concern for the impact that each IT incident has on the client sitting behind the computer, who is trying to do some useful, profitable work.

These guys are usually very knowledgeable and have great justifications for why they run the systems the way they do. They're also stunned when the total cost of running a new fleet of computers with quality management, and the inclusion of finance, is lower than their salary. Today, with good quality management tools available to every business – large or small – there is no excuse for unstable systems and reactive IT management. So, plan to upgrade, simplify and save time and money – while getting more from your staff by removing the wasted time and unnecessary stress caused by old computers.

Ultimately, if your computers don't run quickly or reliably, it is time to do some planning and budgeting to ensure you are not burning thousands of dollars on your resources to save only hundreds on your computers. Clearly, part of your planning is to ensure that as the new equipment comes in, the old equipment is taken out and sent to a recycler. For more information, refer to my previous article, Greening your IT systems.

David Markus is the founder of Combo - the IT services company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth.

I need to replace some or all of my IT business systems, what should I do?

In this week's article, I've captured 11 steps for SMEs who need to replace some or all of their key business systems. This is what the corporates spend millions of dollars on, and they get it wrong more often than not. But if you follow these steps – carefully and systematically – you might just manage to be one of the success stories and position your business for rapid growth.

STEP 1
Find out what systems the leaders in your industry use...

• Talk to everyone who is willing to talk to you!
• Google for systems, applications and industry bodies who may be able to help you.
• Visit other similar sites and companies who might be doing this better than you.

STEP 2
Identify the key processes (eg. invoicing, sending quotes, sending newsletters – whatever it is) that the new system MUST be able to do from end-to-end, so that you can throw the old system(s) away. Then, divide your people who do these processes into two groups:

1. Those who can think beyond what they do now, and might be able to invent a new process.
2. Those who aren't capable of changing what they do without being explicitly trained.

The first group should form the basis of your project team. The second group should be tasked with documenting exactly what it is that they do now. Take a few days to workshop and document your processes as best you can, and in as much detail as you can.

STEP 3
Develop a shortlist of possible applications that deliver as many of the above processes as possible. Once you have one or – at most – two standout applications:

• Thoroughly research available product information to ensure that the product aligns with your goals, and solves your big-picture problems.
• Identify the particular processes that the product has a good reputation for delivering. Also highlight any other important (to you) processes they claim to include, but might not be so good at. These are the ones you must test thoroughly to see if they will work for you.
• Research the vendor, ie. will they be in business in five years time?
• Find examples of relevant implementations in your industry.

STEP 4
Get a trial version of your preferred application installed into a test environment. Pay for this if you have to, but don't skip the step.

STEP 5
Test your core business processes using sample data, and document how you are going to do 'business as usual' using the new system. Minimise changes to your current business processes wherever possible, and save improvements for later. I realise you're investing this money to make improvements, but if you cut over to your new system without ensuring that people can do their essential job, then you'll be in major trouble.

STEP 6
Plan your data migration. Take an extract, and do a test import. Be prepared to throw this out and start again. Whatever issues are thrown up by this – and there will be many – fix as many as you can in your current system and work out a strategy for overcoming each of the other problems.

STEP 7
Plan your training. Hopefully your new system has good, free online training. Plan to run workshops and training sessions. Get key people involved in the testing then use them to train. If people know how to use the system from the outset, you'll massively improve your chances of a successful outcome. And, in preparing your training, you will highlight potential areas where the system simply doesn't work as you expected – which gives you a chance to fix things before you go live.

STEP 8
Create an implementation plan. Simply put – write down what needs to be done, in what order and by whom. Agree what a successful "go live" looks like. And how you will "back out" if it fails.

STEP 9
Plan for a "bedding in" period. Capture everyone's ideas for improvements, but first focus on fixing things that are truly broken. Save the improvements for later, unless they deliver "no brainer" benefit at low risk.

STEP 10
Don't forget to decommission your old system(s), or make them "read only" to stop people from accidentally forgetting to use the new system.

STEP 11
When the new system is stable, start planning and implementing all those improvements you bought this system for in the first place.

A WARNING FOR SMEs THAT AREN'T IT SAVVY

If – like many – you have an "IT guy" or clever office manager looking after you, you should ONLY put them in change of your project if:

1. They have demonstrably followed this entire process before; and
2. They can explain to you how they did it and what they learned.

My experience is that most "IT guys" and clever office managers have NEVER done this, and you are in no position to have them learn it at your expense. It's like putting a dental nurse in charge of jaw surgery, simply because she has 'dental' in her job description name or thinks it will look good on her CV.

You need to assume they have about the same knowledge and understanding as you do (ie. not much), and get someone experienced in IT business systems to help you. Yes, it's expensive – but the cost of failure is much, much higher. Try predicting the cost of losing unhappy staff and customers as a basis for your budget for getting help. Also factor in the cost of your best, most competent staff being focused on systems replacement instead of their real job for five to 10 times longer than necessary, because they don't know what they don't know, and can't explain why it simply isn't going to plan.

And – my final comment – if at any stage your gut is telling you that this is all going horribly wrong and isn't going to deliver value, seriously consider cutting your losses. No matter how bad the pain of your current systems that caused you to go down this path, your current systems may actually be working, and returning to them is better than putting something in place that is totally dysfunctional to save face. Sometimes you need to be brave, and then use what you learned to make a better decision the next time you select and implement an IT solution.

How long will this take?

My experience is that if you do it well, it's an average of four to eight months until you're doing business as usual with the new system. If you do it badly, maybe two to three years?

David Markus is the founder of Combo - the IT services company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth.

Our IT guy lacks skills. Help!

How can I get our IT guy to build our IT strategy, when he can't even keep up with changing the ink cartridges in our printers?

Has your organisation grown to the point where IT was a big enough pain to hire someone to fix it for you on a full-time basis? Did you go out to the market place and hire an "all rounder" to replace the toner in the printers, fix the PCs, build and maintain the servers, train the staff on the applications, run the reports from the ERP system, and help out with the webpage and email issues?

This is exactly what many small growing businesses do. And chances are that if you are in the same situation, you hired someone who knows a lot more about IT than you do. After all, we are often told to "hire up" to get someone into the business who is better at an area than you are. So, well done, you have hired up! But why are you still having these problems?

To put it simply, you have a depth problem; you have one guy trying to cover the small problems for which he is too expensive to be fixing, as well as the big problems that he doesn't have the skills or experience to resolve. Maybe, you have a jack of all trades and master of none.

To have only one person covering all the bases means that they have to stop designing your future business systems to perform simple tasks like tracing an unplugged network cable. I'm sure you would agree that this probably isn't the best use of your money. If they are capable of designing the right solution then they will be an expensive resource to be performing the simpler IT tasks.

It is likely that when you first added this resource to your team, it was like a breath of fresh air, and you found them to be really useful. No doubt things have grown since then and your IT systems have become more complex. And now you are dependent on the one guy to maintain your IT system. The one guy who probably has all the IP locked away in his head and you therefore fear the day that he is no longer there.

Occasionally in my travels I have come across an in-house IT guy who looks after the whole IT environment and has documented all important data about the systems that are in place. But this is rare.

And that brings us to you, and now. Although your IT guy got you to where you are now on his own, this does not necessarily mean he has the capability to get you to the next point as your business grows. You need to consider your plans for supplementing his capabilities or replacing them completely if he can't take you to the next point.

So how do you progress from this point in your business growth cycle?

To get an independent view of what is going on in your business, see our recent article about IT auditing Why should we audit our IT environment? This will also let you take a step back from the tactical day-to-day operations of maintaining IT and give you a strategic overview of IT in your business and what needs to be accomplished over the next few years.

Once you have the strategic plan you can budget to remove "creaking infrastructure", and get the right software and implementation. Then you will be able to get the right support services in place to maintain and expand the system as your business continues to grow.

The right people and the right systems can underpin the growth of your business. If you think you may have a problem developing in the IT area chances are that it is already a larger problem than you think, as poor planning in IT can lead to over spending and under performing systems. Just throwing more money at the problem will not solve it until you have the right people working in the right areas.

Don't be afraid to ask for advice.

David Markus is the founder of Combo - the IT services company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth.

We spend a lot of time trying to figure out what we need for IT in our business. Help!

We seem to spend a lot of time trying to figure out what we need for IT in our business. Is there a simple answer?

In response to this week's question, I'd like to quote Einstein as he put it very nicely, 'Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler'. To me, this is about recognising the complexity of systems and appreciating that complexity cannot – and should not – be removed.

In our businesses, IT systems are productivity tools and need to align to our business requirements. As businesses are handcrafted by people, they rarely form a perfect fit with a computer system. Computer systems are complex, and research into what to use for each component of your technology solution is essential.

In a small business enterprise, it is very difficult to determine what the best technology solution actually is. Additionally, it is very difficult to find any particular advisor who provides solid advice; without coming into your business and analysing your requirements.

Over the past eight years, during the course of visiting many SMEs every week, I have observed that the very skill of analysis is often missing in the SME sector. As a result, many businesses simply buy a solution and hope that it works.
There is actually a gap in our industry caused by people getting the 'advice they need' from a person selling a solution – not exactly objective! When somebody comes out from a software company to advise you on how to upgrade your accounting software, they are not there to analyse your business – they are there to sell you their solution. The nature of this visit is therefore a 'make it fit' approach.

There is now an emerging trend for a roving CIO to visit SMEs to assist with analysis. The benefit of this style of service is that a lot of the necessary research has been done before, and so economies of scale are achieved despite the relatively high hourly rate. If the roving CIO has designed systems for several businesses already that year, it is safe to assume they have already done a lot of research into what is available, and will be equipped to guide the outcome more effectively.

A specialist like this can reduce your risk of purchasing the wrong product or solution, and can provide valuable guidance on the implementation. They might also be able to save you time and distraction by providing IT project management skills as well. I have seen many businesses use a project manager without IT knowledge to run their IT project, because they thought it was just another project. I have not seen one of these projects run well, despite many of the project managers being very capable people. They did not know what they did not know, and fell into pitfalls that are inherent in the IT industry.

Similarly, on the IT infrastructure side with PCs, servers, networks and the standard fair of email, spam filters, anti-virus and so on, you can find experts who work with hundreds of small businesses who have tested dozens of applications in the past year, and know which systems deliver the greatest benefit. By tapping into their knowledge rather than trying to do in-house testing and selection, small businesses can save many hours of research time and reduce the risk of buying poor-quality products.

Most small businesses only need a few hours of high-quality advice each year, and many hours of tactical delivery and maintenance on these IT systems.

Therefore, maintaining these high-level IT skills in-house is just not the right approach unless your business is to be the roving CIO or system architect.
So, to reduce your time seeking the best IT solution for your business, the best advice I have is to find a good strategic advisor or advisors, and develop a relationship with them to ensure you can trust the advice you receive.

David Markus is the founder of Combo - the IT services company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth.