1 Thing Everybody Gets Wrong About IT
20 years ago, we started as a break/fix IT company. If your computer crashed, we’d come fix it. Need anti-virus software, we had you covered. We became incredibly efficient at this model and transformed into a world-class Managed Service Provider (MSP). What we soon realized, is that IT is about hardware and about software, but it’s not about understanding how people work, understanding their process, and what it is that really makes people productive.
We took a step back and started studying people, business, and looking at how we could make your technology work for you. For example:
When you move your files from an on-premise file server, to Teams, or the cloud, your technology says you have 100,000 files that are 5, even 10 years old and it’s ok to keep them because you have enough space. But what happens, is all those files just create noise for the business. They make it difficult to search and find what you need, which hampers productivity. Nobody takes the time to look through and prune 100,000 files so you have less noise to deal with. And by not doing that, you end up searching through all those outdated files, continually, and it really slows you down.
As we started getting deeper into the people and process side, we realized that there is a gap in IT. As an MSP, we’re so focused on the technology. We wanted to start focusing on the people and process side as well. We started digging in and showing people how to prune and clean their file server, and help them understand hoe ignoring this becomes noise for the business. We showed them the impact on everybody’s productivity if we got rid of the files that were over 6 years old. I’m not saying get rid of the legal documents and items you need, but you can automatically prune them after a certain period of time. Once compliance requirements are up, get rid of it!
That isn’t something you do in IT. That is something you do when you value people and making them more productive. In IT you do patches and migrations, you don’t sit down with a staff member or decision maker and say, “What do you really need? How should we restructure this so it’s a little easier for you to find the files, and collaborate and work with your team on them?” You have to talk to people for that, not the technology. As we started getting deeper into that, we started realizing that IT is in fact about the people, and if we don’t work with them, then we’re really missing the boat. In IT you set up systems, but you never train your people on how to maximize the system. We realized we needed to have a team that is dedicated to training and really upgrading people skills, instead of just upgrading computer technology.