Top 10 things to expect from your I.T. People

BY: Jason Caras, Co-CEO of IT Authorities

Introduction• Whether you have your own I.T. department or you use an

outside provider, there are certain things you should expect AND receive and also understand about I.T.

• This short presentation outlines what you should expect and understand to ultimately manage your I.T. like every other department in your company with accountability through key performance indicators and metrics.

• The following is a presentation that will help you manage your IT people, processes and technology by Jason Caras, Co-CEO of IT Authorities currently ranked 35th in the world by MSPMentor.net

Who is Jason Caras?• Jason is a Co-CEO at IT

Authorities, Inc. the 35th Ranked Managed Service Provider in the World (By MSPMentor)

• Jason was named 2009 CEO of the Year (by Tampa Bay CEO Magazine)

• Inc. Magazine ranked IT Authorities 801 out of the 5000 Fastest Growing Companies in America.

Two Different Perspectives

IT Person’s Perspective

NON-IT Person’s

Perspective

A Comfortable Place?• From the Non-IT person

perspective:

– Many I.T. Departments live in a very comfortable place in that most of them have non-technical people that oversee them and often those people have no idea how to determine what the I.T. people are doing and if what they are doing is actually productive and following best practices.

A Comfortable place?, Continued

• From the IT person’s perspective:

– Your people (if you have an internal I.T. department) may also be overworked and constantly running around putting out fires due to a lack of metrics, budget, automation and information to solve the vicious circle I.T. can create.

– Maybe more staff is really not the answer or maybe more staff is required. A small investment in tools and processes may be the answer to improve your I.T. staff’s quality of life at work, the quality of service your end users receive and the piece of mind you require to manage your I.T. investments.

Are you in a safe place?

• If your CIO or top IT person in your company left, would you know how to handle your IT environment?

• If you are a CIO or top IT person in your company, what have you done to make your position invaluable to your company?

How do you measure your I.T.?

• Most business owners and non-technical managers of I.T. departments rely on 3 methods of measurement for their I.T. infrastructure and support:– Are the systems up and running?– Is anyone complaining about I.T.?– Do the I.T. people show up on time or

at all?

“What other department do you

spend so much money on and have no idea of how to

track or manage?”

What you should expect…

Top 10• Monitoring • Management • End User Service • Reporting • Asset Tracking • Change Management• Training • Auditing, Documentation & 3 rd Party Assistance• Planning – Technology Road mapping• Self Evaluation

Monitoring • Monitoring systems and

applications to detect and respond to issues before end users are affected is an absolute must to:– Reduce employee

downtime – Reduce system downtime – Ensure your systems are in

good health – Provide your IT people

with accurate data so they don’t have to search for and rely on old school process of elimination

1

Management • Management tools exist to be

able to do more with less. Period.

• Many IT departments get employee sprawl because they simply do not have the tools so that one person can do what it typically takes three people to do.

• Worth a look:– Kaseya.com – N-Able.com– LevelPlatforms.com

2

End User Service• A Service Level Guarantee (SLA) should be set and agreed

upon by both non-IT people and the IT people to ensure a collective understanding exists between the two.– This mutual understanding will set the expectations properly and

provide a baseline from which to measure the IT people– Examples may include a 1 hour response for critical issues, etc. – A more advanced

Priority Description Examples Response Time

Critical

All users and their normal work processes are negatively affected

A mission critical file server is down preventing all users from working. A switch is down preventing all network access. The company’s business

website is down resulting in lost revenue. 1 hr

HighA users PC is down (hardware, virus, etc.)

A user’s computer is not functional or a critical application on that workstation is not responding. An application needs an update before a user can work on it again (i.e. an accounting package has a new year tax

table update) 2 hrs

MediumUser has a question that is needed to do their job

A user needs to know how to bold a table in Word for a project they are working on. Same Business Day

Low

User has a question that is helpful todo their job.

A user has a question about a feature or error message that does not affect their normal work activities. Next Business Day

3

Reporting – 4 Basics • Whether you have an internal I.T.

department or use an outside provider, you should expect to receive on a regular basis the following best practice cornerstones of a well run I.T. practice that is also empowered by management:– Know the state of your information

technology investments (Good, Bad or Indifferent)

– Know what work is being performed– Know what service level is being

provided to your employees– Know what you will need to budget

for over the next 12-36 months

4

Reporting - Know the “State” of your Systems

• You should receive a report that DEMONSTRATES the state of your systems, good, bad or indifferent.

• No hiding behind failed backups, system outages, failed patching and security updates.

• Just the truth, the whole truth and nothing but…

4

Reporting - Know what the I.T. people are actually doing

• You should receive a report that DEMONSTRATES the actual work performed by your I.T. people - This would include at least: – Are your systems being monitored

24x7x365? • The technology has existed to accomplish this

for years. Monitoring with good management practices can lower your total cost of ownership of a single PC by as much as $2000 per year!

– Server reboots – Needed to ensure reliability and health

– Patching success / failure – Needed to ensure security and reliability

– Defragmentation success / failure - Needed to keep your systems running efficiently

Your I.T. people may be doing a great job and you have no way to know it . This results in low morale as they live on as unsung heroes and consequently unnecessary turnover and higher costs.

4

Reporting - Know what your end users are experiencing

• The level of service your employees and end users receive has a direct correlation to your profitability. Shouldn’t you know how well they are being served? You should receive a report that includes at least: – Total number of service requests by

employees and end users – The time it takes to address your

issues – The types of service requests to

identify trends and areas that need to be addressed from a macro level

4

Reporting - What about spending?• You should have a clear roadmap of the

future expenses you can expect to have just to maintain your systems let alone meet your future business objectives. This should include two areas of budget planning:– Capacity – Your systems are most likely

growing and that growth is probably requiring more hard drive space, memory and processing power. An effective and report would tell you what you need to buy at the trending rate of growth for these elements

– Subscriptions and Warranties – This report would show you which systems will no longer have a warranty or a license that needs to be renewed.

4

Asset Tracking • At a minimum you need to know:– What and where your IT assets are located– Who has what device in their possession such as a

laptop or flat screen monitor?– What warranties are and maintenance contracts are

expiring

5

Change Management• How do you

control change?• How do you

prevent unwanted and potentially disruptive change to your network?

• The answer is CHANGE MANAGEMENT!

Change Management

Do you know where your assets are?

Who was it purchased

from?

Warranty expiration?

Purchase dates?

Lease tracking?

What does each user

have?

History – issues,

changes, moves, etc.

Retirement?

6

Training • Training is key to delivering one of the

most basic of human needs which is to learn and grow

• Training is required for your in-house tech’s to stay on top of one of the fastest changing industries

• A lack of training will result in erroneous management, trial and error and consequently increased downtime and instability

• Training costs must be evaluated when considering keeping your IT completely in-house. – Outsource providers can augment staff and

skills sets so you don’t have to keep expensive certified engineers on staff for sparse work.

7

Auditing • Third party unbiased audits will can reveal a lot of

valuable information about your I.T. systems, people and management practices.

• Most companies do not have a centralized repository for all technical information making employee turnover painless and for faster resolutions to problems by having all of the necessary information readily accessible

• A good audit will provide management with highly detailed insights on:– State of the current network infrastructure– Technology environment– Design of systems– Management and maintenance of systems – Performance of hardware– IT staffing requirements – Employee experience – Management practices – Identifies business vulnerabilities from technology – Risks and vulnerabilities – Identifies current disaster preparedness, recovery and

business continuity plans– Provides insight into future spending requirements and

serves as validation for strategic technology and business plans

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Planning / Technology Road Mapping• Reporting is essential to

creating a good technology roadmap

• Three primary areas to budget for:– Capacity, utilization and trending

of your systems will give you insight into the investments needed to keep the systems working

– Maintenance costs, software renewals etc. need to be included

– Staff requirements can be determined if your reporting shows the average response time and sheer number of tickets

9

Self Evaluation

• Evaluate your IT People/Practice using the Gartner IT Maturity Model

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Where does your I.T. dept/provider rank against the Gartner I.T. Maturity Model?10

Level 0 - The Chaotic Level • Does your IT

completely rely on users to inform them of problems?

• If they were fired or left your company, do you have the documentation you need for continuity?

• Is the reliability of your systems unpredictable?

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Level 1 - The Reactive Level • Is your I.T. group constantly

fighting fires instead of being proactive?

• This level says they can do “some” inventory management, and can receive some alerts from parochial monitoring tools such as up and down status– Your users would also know

when the systems are up or down and therefore up/down monitoring alone is not very valuable

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Level 2 – The Proactive Level• Here your I.T. people

have invested in a standardized monitoring tool and can analyze data, set thresholds for alerting and measure the application “availability”– They cannot however

measure how well the applications are actually performing which is tied directly to your employees productivity.

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Level 3 – The Proactive Level• At Level 3, your I.T.

department is able to clearly guarantee levels of service of both support and system performance and be able to then compare the system performance with employee productivity or quality of customer interactions if applicable.

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Level 4 – The Value Level• At this level your I.T.

department is being run like a strategic business partner and is accountable for costs, productivity, performance, meeting business objectives, and can tie the performance of the systems to the employee productivity and the profitability of the company.

• This level encompasses all of the “positive” traits of the previous levels and bridges the gap between I.T. and the business side of the house.

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Summary• The solution is a combination of people, processes and tools.

– Your people or your providers people need to be open to the possibility that there is a better way to manage the I.T. and be open to a transition from reactive to proactive.• Attitude is everything

– Processes need to be developed between non-I.T. people and the I.T. people to convey and report the information in a format agreed upon by all. • Consistency and accountability are key

– Technology tools will be necessary to accomplish an I.T. department run with Best Practices. Basic monitoring can accomplish 90% of the Best Practices effort• Advanced system monitoring solutions will provide depth unavailable by free or

lower end monitoring systems • Automation and reporting are critical

• Contact Jason Caras for more information at jcaras@itauthorities.com , 813-246-5100 or through: