So today on our Tech for Business podcast, Alex, our Assistant Director of Services is
joining us to discuss questions IT admins should ask their business leaders.
So Alex, just to start us off, why are we even having this conversation?
I mean, why are IT admins in the room with their president, their CEOs, their C levels?
It's a great question and it's one that probably doesn't get thought of a lot.
Why would we need to be there?
You know, you're not up high on the food chain or anything like that, but so much runs through
technology and leverages us that a simple change or policy or procedural change directly
impacts us.
And being in that room helps us be able to advocate and know what's coming and be prepared
for what to look for.
Definitely.
I kind of think, you know, your team is a little bit boots on the ground.
You got to keep connection with that frontline people.
So I do have five questions I've brought today that, you know, I think IT admins should be
asking and I'm curious as to what you think.
And you know, if you would add or change anything.
So the first thing is sort of long term planning.
So looking six months ahead, a year ahead, where do you foresee us going?
And why is this long term planning question important for IT members to be a part of?
Yeah.
So it's a great question for the fact of, you know, going to touch a little bit on budget.
I imagine that'll probably be one of your questions you'll ask going forward, but it
really comes into long term planning, let's us know what infrastructure we need six months
from now to accommodate the goals of the company and the objectives that we have to a year
from now.
Are we starting to position ourselves into maybe the cloud?
Do we want to go cloud orientated?
Well that takes some infrastructure out of our scope.
So maybe we don't put our budget there.
We don't forecast planning there for that.
Being part of that long term planning three, six years out is so important because it dictates
how we're going to structure everything on the back end and being involved in going,
hey, that's a great idea.
Do you know it's going to take these four components to make that happen?
What might look good on paper and be sold from a software developer or a company doesn't
mean that it's not it's turn turn a knob, click a button and it goes live.
There's a lot of stuff behind the scenes that we'll have to get prior provision because
let's be honest now we're moving more and more to technology, the leveraging the internet
and pushing the computers further and further in the technology that we have, which then
directly impacts us.
It may help accounting and why do we need to be involved if it helps accounting?
I totally understand, but I can guarantee at some capacity it's going to involve us.
And just being involved in those conversations just sets everybody up for success.
That's great.
I love saying that communication setting people up for success.
That's so important.
And you did guess my next question, which is budget.
Along with that long term planning, what is the budget available?
How do you want me to prioritize the budget?
And I'm curious as to you kind of explained it a little bit, but why are IT admins involved
in accounting, in budget?
Why are you in that conversation?
I mean, there's a lot of aspects of the budget that impact us.
Personnel, our day-to-day costs.
It sounds silly, but keeping the printers running, toner, stuff like that.
Things that you just don't think about is budgetary items that people just take for granted.
Our staff, future projects, that involves budgetary things.
If we're going to the cloud, we might not need server infrastructure, which is amazing.
That's one net cost.
When you go to the cloud, it's a monthly cost, most likely.
So you're trading a big upfront cost where you finance out for five years to a recurring
cost that dictates the budget drastically of how we need to forecast and make sure we
are involved in going, hey, cool, we're going to the cloud.
While that takes X out of the equation where we don't worry about this every five years,
we have this every month.
Are we in line with our budget and are we prepared for that?
And then that corresponds with just replacement of computers and stuff like that.
What is our life cycle replacement?
That dictates the budget.
Are we three years, five years, eight years?
Where are we at?
What are we going to do for our budget replacement?
And being able to be involved in those conversations, again, the key thing that you're going to
learn from us on the end is we want everybody to be successful.
We want everything to be up 100% of the time as much as you guys want to.
That's why we want to be in the room because no one likes to spend money on IT.
We get it.
It's not the pretty budgetary item that anybody likes to see, but unfortunately we run through
everything.
So being part of that chair, being part of that table is so important for us.
Definitely.
And you kind of mentioned things like going to the cloud and projects and planning.
And that's a little bit of my next question.
Is IT admins the importance of asking, what are the roles and responsibilities?
At what point does this project get handed off and who does it get handed off to?
And why is that an important question to ask, those clarifying questions?
Yeah.
So the reason why it's so important to know who's on first and who's on second, I'll help
myself, it was right there, is just for that sheer fact of we're going to maybe stand something
up, get it about halfway, but we're not going to be the one that's going to configure the
accounting software.
So who are we handing off to?
Are we standing off to Timmy or Susie?
Are they going to take over this part of the job and then are we coming back in?
It's this kind of setting everybody up for success that, okay, we have this.
It's also timeline related too.
So our first phase is going to be getting all this squared away.
It's going to take us three months, then it's going to get handed off to this department.
And then leadership, the CEO, everybody like that knows that this project of implementing
X tool or whatever is going to take eight months, but three months from this team and
only three months and then a couple of months to go live and then we do the cut.
All that stuff kind of dictates to who's doing what step and coming back and forth.
And that's kind of where that like, you know, for lack of better words, project manager.
And sometimes we don't have that in the budget.
So that's where we kind of wear multiple hats where we're kind of managing the project,
but that communication is going to be so key that everybody understands, okay, at this
point we are done until the day goes live or something like that.
So yeah, definitely.
So stepping a little bit away from, you know, projects and planning and that side, let's
talk a little bit about your day to day, which could be working with customers, it could
be cybersecurity, data security, privacy, a question, IT admins should bring up to their
C levels is how can we ensure data security and privacy.
And my question to you is why are you involving the C levels with that?
That's your job in your field.
Why are the present and CEO's involved in those conversations?
Yeah, it's really just kind of kind of could be on the same thing about the projects and
stuff like that is this, making sure on the same page, make sure we both understand that
what are we compliant to making sure we understand, make sure they understand what we're compliant
to and that sometimes incur costs.
And the security focus world that we live in and how prevalent security is.
I mean, you can't turn on the news without hearing something nowadays is how do we make
sure we don't hit the five o'clock news?
Absolutely.
And those roles of responsibilities on security is so important as well.
Oh, yes.
Yeah, 100%.
So are we compliant to PCI or HIPAA?
You know, okay, we are.
Okay, that means it requires these guidelines and it's going to be so important that, you
know, it's not to, it's okay to say we don't know or to make sure, hey, I believe as the
IT administrator that we're, we have to be held to this.
Do you know, not saying that you should or should not know Mr. CEO or anything like that,
but do you understand it?
Do you agree that we are compliant to those standards?
Or are you aware of what we need for our insurance and stuff like that to be protected?
So my last question that I think IT admins should be asking their business leaders is
what support can you provide me with my team?
And my question to you, Alex, is why is that advocacy important when it comes to your team?
And what does that kind of mean?
Yeah, so how to support my, how to support the IT team, the IT department and why it's
so important is we touch so many facets of everything that happens in the company.
If you know it or not, we are so intricately involved in everything.
And that also involves staying current.
We're advocating for our engineers to stay certified, you know, if it's once a year or
everything like that and trying to keep us educated, technology is never sleeping and
always evolving and always changing, keeping us on the leading edge of what is going on
only helps the company.
I know it's another expense, that wonderful budget, but I promise it's one of those things
that come back and it also reinvigorates the team when you invest back into them because
they feel like you've got their back, you want them to be successful, you want them
to grow.
And it only helps you as an organization to grow that department by supporting them financially,
and everything like that, and you know, the other potential is if you want to maybe look
into going into a facet, well, let's start up a demo environment.
Yes, there's a little bit of a cost factor into it, but you get two great kickbacks.
You're getting to see the future and you're letting those engineers so I can tell you
are going to have the biggest smile on their face when they get to hear they can go play
in a new test environment and everything like that because they get to go cut their teeth
in new technology and it's just going to make them more invigorated and bring back into
the company.
Definitely, that's great.
So when we talk about these questions and these conversations, how often do you think
these conversations should happen?
And then if you have any advice maybe to an IT admin or manager who's never had this conversation
with their C levels, how do they even bridge that gap?
Yeah, so I think at the minimum it should be once a year and it should be prior to budgets
like a quarter before budget so you can get your budget together because it's important
for you to be prepared for this meeting.
It's not to be defensive.
It's not to come combative in the meeting.
It's just to become prepared and educated so you know what to prepare for.
How to prepare for that meeting?
Just, you know, you know what you need to do for your day to day operations.
You might not know the dollars and cents and that's okay.
That's part of this conversation.
But don't be afraid to just go and, you know, knock on their door, put something on their
calendar and have that meeting.
And even if it's like a quick 15 minute at first and say this is what I want to meet
with, you know, what information can we make this fruitful?
I know it's going to be scary to come into that meeting for your first time if you've
never had it before because, you know, it's the CEO or something like that.
If you don't have a like a CTO or something like that, that's kind of helping you advocate
for this stuff.
So just come prepared.
And like I said, come with an open mind.
If you haven't been involved, that means it's not that they haven't thought of it.
It's just maybe, you know, or anything like that or they don't want you in the room.
Sometimes it's we're forgotten sometimes in IT and it's okay.
So you know, speak up for yourself and just say, hey, this is what it, this is what I'd
like to talk about.
I just want to make sure we're all on the same page and we're setting up for success
for the next year.
Love it.
Love it so much that self advocacy, the team and the success of the company, everyone working
together is great.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
Thank you.
Really informative.
If you enjoyed this podcast, please like, subscribe.
Love to hear from you.
If you have questions or a topic you'd like us to discuss, reach out to us at info at
cIT-net.com or head out to our website cIT-net.com slash podcast and we'll be back next week
with an all new episode.