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By
John Hogan
For Dot Com Magazine
TI field a lot of questions as a freelancer. Some are difficult
questions that only an experienced network technician could
answer. Sadly, though, most are not.
Take
a pop quiz with me about your company's
technology. The topics are technology training and
internalizing versus outsourcing.
1) Yes
or no? The technology infrastructure of your
organization is a tool that makes your employees more
efficient.
The
answer should be yes. Employees should use
technology as a tool to access, manipulate and
disseminate information. Employees should not be
slaves to that technology. Every employee on your
payroll is responsible for a distinct set of duties,
whether those duties include capping bottles or
closing million-dollar deals. Figuring out how to
delete email, however, is probably not in the job
description of anyone in your organization.
2) True
or false? Your employees are well trained to
use the basic tools of technology that their job
duties require (email, web, design software, etc)
Unfortunately,
the answer to this question, more often
than not, is a hesitant 'False'. Whether you
manufacture cheese or lay fiber optic cable, your
business has core competencies. So do your employees.
Your Master Brewer should make a good stout, not debug
network settings.
Lack
of internal training leads to questions like:
- "Why
do the letters change size when I change my font size?"
- "Why do I get this error when I check my mail? It
says, 'There are no new messages.'" - "I keep
getting 'Out of Memory' errors. I've deleted all the files
I can, why do I keep getting the message?"
If your
employees are asking questions like these, the
chances are pretty good that your technology training
isn't up to snuff.
3) True
or false? The employees in your organization
who are responsible for the upkeep of your technology
are well trained in all skill sets that their job
duties require.
Your
organization's technology needs have, no doubt,
gone through significant changes over the past two
years. What once started as a small network of two
desktop PC's probably now includes an internal email
server (Microsoft Exchange, perhaps?), a file or print
server, and maybe an external (or internal?) Web
server. Companies, sometimes, take a reactive approach
to this sort of growth: learn enough to install the
stuff, and maintain it only when it breaks. That makes
for on-the-job training, sometimes under stressful
conditions (like, when the email doesn't work!).
In some
companies, the percentage of time an internal
system administrator spends just on maintaining email
is huge - up to 70% of his or her time, maybe on an
operating system or mail transport agent that they
were never properly trained to use. Broken down over a
2000 hour year, that's nearly 1500 hours per year just
administering the email. (What does that guy get paid?
$36k/year?)
4) True
or false? Internalizing costs always saves you
money.
Dave
Troup, President of DCT Technologies in Green
Bay, put it to me this way: ãWhy would we spend the
resources to maintain something trivial like our phone
system when we can outsource it for a fraction of the
cost?ä What Dave is saying makes sense: use you
employees for their strengths. Dave's team could
certainly figure out and administer their telephone
system - these people build complex networks, plugging
and unplugging all day. The point: phone systems are
not their job.
Use
the example in question 3 about the email
administrator. In that case it would certainly be to
their benefit to outsource, at least their email, to
someone whose expertise is totally in running email
servers. Outsourcing can cost from $35-$85 per hour
and higher. That may seem like a lot, but taken
against the $25k of the aforementioned (and
overburdened) administrator outsourcing may be a good
idea.
It's
not up to your sales people to debug your network
troubles, and it shouldn't be up to your delivery
drivers to deliver your Web site. That's not to say
that a graphic artist on your staff can't be
cross-trained to make a Web site. Use your people at
what they excel. Know and accept their limitations and
don't be afraid to call for help if you need it.
Now,
how do I type an uppercase zero?
John
Hogan is a free-lance computer and networking consultant.
E-mail your questions or comments to him at [email protected]
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