I recently had to present to our Executive Team (CEO, CFO, all the Sr. VP's, etc) on the status of IT. Now, a bit of background. I was hired as the IT Manager to fill a need for an internal IT dept back in August of '04. The reasoning was two fold: Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliance and the need to spend less on outsourced IT (they had no internal IT dept). Now, I report to the CFO, who is a brilliant man and realizes the need for IT (go figure). But, as we all know he is in the minority. I find a lot of us (IT folk) only see things from our eyes and expect everyone sees it the same way. We know we are important to the well-being of the company. We know without us things would deteriorate. We know we deal with other peoples problems all day long. But they don't. One of IT managements most important jobs (IMHO) is to help them see through our eyes. Make the Exec's realize our importance because if we don't help them, they never will. Nor will they ever have a desire to. Here's the deal, they have a company to run. If they need something from IT, they expect us to be at their call. Yes, that's one of our jobs, but in their minds, at that moment, it's our only job. Make them see that we have a billion other things going on. Show them Metric's if possible for help calls logged. Show them server up-time statistics and compare them to other companies. Show them SPAM prevention statistics (if possible) because if they relate to anything, it's email. For instance, I showed them during my presentation that we have prevented over 2 million spam emails from entering the workplace since 1/1/05. Those are numbers they take a look at and start to realize without you, that would be an inbox full of crap they don't want to deal with. Bring IT into their daily lives; make them realize what it would be like without IT and then they will start to realize the need for a quality IT dept. I also brought hard numbers into play. While all the other departments are spending money (marketing, sales, etc) I showed them that by bringing me in-house, I was able to save them $230,000 in outsourced IT. I then showed them that if you take my salary, my sys admins salary (I brought on in February), and all the project cost from this year you are still left over with money. That's the kind of thing they pay attention to. And trust me, I did a TON of project work (complete domain rebuild, Exchange 2003, many more). I also moved all our phone lines over to a good 3rd party provider and asked them to do a cost analysis versus AT&T for me. It came out that the phone moves will end up saving the company around $2,700/month. Numbers, they love numbers. Wherever you can get them and if they relate, put them in. The more technical we are the more they fade out from what we are saying. Bring our world down to the business level. Once you do that, everything should start to fall into place.
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I recently had to present to our Executive Team (CEO, CFO, all the Sr. VP's, etc) on the status of IT. Now, a bit of background. I was hired as the IT Manager to fill a need for an internal IT dept back in August of '04. The reasoning was two fold: Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliance and the need to spend less on outsourced IT (they had no internal IT dept). Now, I report to the CFO, who is a brilliant man and realizes the need for IT (go figure). But, as we all know he is in the minority. I find a lot of us (IT folk) only see things from our eyes and expect everyone sees it the same way. We know we are important to the well-being of the company. We know without us things would deteriorate. We know we deal with other peoples problems all day long. But they don't. One of IT managements most important jobs (IMHO) is to help them see through our eyes. Make the Exec's realize our importance because if we don't help them, they never will. Nor will they ever have a desire to. Here's the deal, they have a company to run. If they need something from IT, they expect us to be at their call. Yes, that's one of our jobs, but in their minds, at that moment, it's our only job. Make them see that we have a billion other things going on. Show them Metric's if possible for help calls logged. Show them server up-time statistics and compare them to other companies. Show them SPAM prevention statistics (if possible) because if they relate to anything, it's email. For instance, I showed them during my presentation that we have prevented over 2 million spam emails from entering the workplace since 1/1/05. Those are numbers they take a look at and start to realize without you, that would be an inbox full of crap they don't want to deal with. Bring IT into their daily lives; make them realize what it would be like without IT and then they will start to realize the need for a quality IT dept. I also brought hard numbers into play. While all the other departments are spending money (marketing, sales, etc) I showed them that by bringing me in-house, I was able to save them $230,000 in outsourced IT. I then showed them that if you take my salary, my sys admins salary (I brought on in February), and all the project cost from this year you are still left over with money. That's the kind of thing they pay attention to. And trust me, I did a TON of project work (complete domain rebuild, Exchange 2003, many more). I also moved all our phone lines over to a good 3rd party provider and asked them to do a cost analysis versus AT&T for me. It came out that the phone moves will end up saving the company around $2,700/month. Numbers, they love numbers. Wherever you can get them and if they relate, put them in. The more technical we are the more they fade out from what we are saying. Bring our world down to the business level. Once you do that, everything should start to fall into place.