Cost Effective IT Leadership

When visiting SME clients, I am often taken by the fact that they have no in-house IT resource, instead outsourcing their IT services across a range of different suppliers. There are obvious benefits in this approach, as IT specialist skills can be a high overhead and keeping up with a rapidly changing technical landscape is difficult to justify.

Outsourcing all of your IT functions is not without risk. There are a lot excellent specialist IT suppliers, but do they manage their own components or look at the bigger picture?

The management of IT suppliers is often spread across the senior members in your business who may not have the time or experience this requires and results in no clear ownership of your IT strategy.

This fragmented approach can mean that there is no single point of ownership when issues occur and time can be lost while the the true source of the problem is identified. It can also lead to a disjointed IT environment and may result in significant overlap between systems, even meaning you are paying for IT that you are not using.

For example, in light of the recent ransomware and security issues, consider how you would get your business back on it’s feet after a cyber attack. Some businesses assume that this is all in hand with their individual suppliers, but in reality there may be significant gaps in how your IT is recovered.

A growing trend is to engage with a ‘Fractional’ part time senior resource. We see this in Finance, Sales, HR and IT. A Fractional IT Leader is a cost-effective way of acquiring IT Director and IT Project Management skills without the overheads of a full time resource.

Shovelstrode Consulting work with businesses like yours to help you get the most from your current IT suppliers and also to plan for the future.