When your organization outsources the IT support, without the appropriate checks and balances, the tactic of “put out the IT fires but don’t prevent the fires” can get out of control.  Look at the vicious cycle below:

1. You experience a problem with IT in your company and you contact your outside support company to come put out the fire by fixing the visible problem
2. They respond and solve the problem you called about
3. You pay the bill – be it hourly or part of a service agreement
4. Since the root cause was never addressed, the then the fire ignites again later
5. Return to step 1 above and repeat forever

Many companies really appreciate their IT vendor for being so responsive and fixing all the problems and are oblivious to the problems.  Some outsourced companies are oblivious to them too – they feel their mission in life is to put out fires.

When I ask some outsourced firms why they did not fix the underlying problems early on, they report that your company did not want to spend the money to set the network up properly. This is ridiculous since most of the time; the initial investment is very inexpensive.  Certainly, over a period of months, avoiding the fires is well worth the investment.

Putting out fires instead of addressing the root problems is especially expensive when you take into account the loss of user productivity, the damage to your brand, and other intangible costs related to the frustrations with malfunctioning technology.

The same goes for restricting Instant Messenger, or blocking web streaming sites that allow users to watch video and eat up the organization’s precious bandwidth. Then there are the issues of employees bringing in personal notebooks and connecting them to the network without any prior anti-virus checking.

Often the procedure goes like this:

• 1. The IT professional makes a suggestion, like removing games from the workstations or forcing a minimum password length
• 2. The executives tell the IT professional, “No way! You are messing up our family culture and are making our computers harder to use!”
• 3. Some IT professional will back down and say, “I am so sorry. It will never happen again.”

The IT professional in step 3 is wanting to remain in the good graces of executives and that is understandable. I want to encourage and empower the IT professionals to be willing to provide some push back to the executives such as, “I understand how you want to have the team members feeling comfortable in our friendly culture and how everyone needs to be able to easily log into the network. Would you allow me to share some perspectives nobody may have told you about?”

Assuming the IT professional receives a “go ahead” response, he or she can continue, “Other organizations have found that users spend a lot of time playing games and watching online videos instead of being productive. This time wasting can cost the company money. Also, short passwords are much easier to crack and it is important to protect our “family” by using good security practices.”

Notice that the executive can still say “no” and now they are better informed.

Some IT professionals are willing to take this extra “stand up for the company” approach and, as long as the IT professional is tactful, the executive will often have increased respect for the IT professional after the communication.

Successful IT Professionals focus on the long term benefits even when it means standing up to executives in a tactful way.  If you are the IT professional, stick to kind words, be patient, and talk about “facts” instead of “opinions.”

The CEO was already disgusted with the outsource company never meeting time/budget estimates on any IT projects. In the past three weeks, I have seen four examples of what happens to companies who outsource their IT. “Company B” relied on a major company to keep their network free of viruses and provide outsourced backup. You guessed it – a virus got into their network and deleted many CAD files, and the outside consultant’s backup service failed to be able to restore any files. The CEO said he felt “cheated” after paying so much for the outside IT firm he paid to aid his internal IT professionals.  “Company C” had an outsourced consultant that stacked all the servers on filing cabinets in the middle of the office. The Ethernet cables were in a huge knotted ball in the floor. Their appliances where the kind you’d put in a home. How can companies who call themselves “IT professionals” be so bad?

“Company C” has switched to a new outsourced company that looks very promising. The outsourced IT company is very professional, makes reasonable estimates on time and money and keeps them, and even sends a survey after each help desk call so the end-users can rate their experience. The end users talk about their help desk experiences using words such as “Wonderful!” Why is this kind of outsourced company the exception rather than the rule?