Written by: Chris Meyers, Managing Director – Technology
As a CIO, each year I would start my strategic planning sessions thinking about the solutions we provide our organization vs. the systems we use. I call it, the Annual IT Health Check.
How many times have I heard someone say that they have multiple gym memberships, but they don’t visit any of the gyms? Or how often have I seen someone belong to a homeowner’s association that provides a neighborhood gym, and still join another gym. Paying twice for a service that is not used.
In the IT application consulting space – I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen an organization pay for an application like O365 and then pay extra for 3rd party solutions like Webex, G-drive, and other applications that are built into O365. Added to that costly inefficiency, not all applications are being used to their potential or utilized successfully.
To help start the year off correctly in your IT organization, make a resolution to take inventory and make the necessary moves to operate more efficiently. Here is a simple application
Health Check Plan to help keep you on track:
1. Take inventory of all the applications your team supports. Make a simple list of every solution that the organization uses and outline what the solution was supposed to provide.
2. Look for redundancy in the applications list. Simply ask if there is more than one application supplying the same functionality.
3. You should rate each solution on a 100% scale for the effectiveness it’s delivering to achieve the desired ROI. Obtain user validation by conducting a survey from users on whether they believe the application is living up to its expectations, or not.
4. Where there is overlap resulting in wasted dollars, or even worse wasted support effort or confusion to the end users, then build a plan to remove the redundancy and reduce costs. I suggest baking into the project plan a strategy for resolving the redundancy by end of Q1.
In collaboration with executive management and front-line users, this is an intentional approach for eliminating overlap and helping the firm achieve the desired ROI for the applications being used. The Health Check Plan ensures your firm takes deliberate steps each year to achieve the annual resolution for a healthier, more efficient, and more effective, IT Operations.
So, while most people set their new year resolutions to be healthier or lose weight, I set IT resolutions that will help firms run more efficiently. This year, I plan to do both. After recently attending the grand opening of a local CycleBar in Evansville, Indiana (wow! what an
experience that was), it inspired me enough to set a goal to become a spin class instructor this year.
What are the things you are doing to ensure your IT Health resolutions are met? I would love to hear from you as we set our resolutions for achieving greater health, in 2020.
Chris Meyers is Managing Director of Blackfin Group’s Technology Consulting Practice. Chris has over 25-years of executive IT experience in the financial services and mortgage banking industry and is programmatically committed to assisting and supporting his client’s success, in any capacity he is called upon for a project.
Email Chris Meyers at CMeyers@BlackFin-Group.com