Intuitive CIO

I get a lot of questions these days about IT spending, and how we can reduce it.

For large companies, there are lots of options,: reduce the staff by 10%, shift more responsibilities onto the user, pull services in-house (or push them out, depending on the service), etc. all of which could easily reduce your costs by millions.

For the under 10-people businesses (which make up the number-one slot for employment in most economies), reducing staff by 10% is rarely an option. Often there is no staff at all, just outside consultants; it’s hard to make them prioritize reducing the moneys you pay them.

I have the top three things that you can do to reduce your IT overhead in these tough times.

1) Prioritize your needs. If email is critical to the success of your business, make sure your IT consultant knows that. Bring him/her in, pay them for an hour of their time to review where you can reduce. The cost of one or two hours of planning will immensely help you in the long run.

2) Educate your staff. Send out an email that starts: “In an effort to reduce our costs going into these economically uncertain times”.. and go on to explain that users should redouble their efforts to fix any IT issues before asking for the consultant to come in.

3) Update your software to the latest security fixes. These days, all major software has the ability to update itself to the latest version. With anti-virus software you are concerned about “virus definition files” with windows; with Mac it’s “service packs” or “patches”. Have each member of staff run those on a weekly basis. This will help reduce issues needing the attention of your IT consultant.

Depending on how far you need to cut, you may have to do more than that. Again, your IT guy is the key. Work with him to reduce those costs.

3 things economy, it spending

When we consider the Terry Childs debacle, we tend to overlook the lessons that small businesses can take from it.

Unfortunately, the dozens of safeguards, the policies and procedures that a huge organisation like the City of San Francisco have would sink the largest of small businesses. To put it in perspective, the 2003 city budget had 31,000 employees. More people work for the city of San Francisco than work for Apple Computers.

Lets put aside the long list of ideas about what could have been done differently, what was done wrong, who was to blame. The real question is how can I prevent it from killing my business.  Today, we take a brief look at:

Sarah Palin!

No, I was just checking if you were still awake. Would be good though.. Blogging about Sarah, those eyes, those boots, ack. Sorry. Back on track.

Backups!

Chances are, if you are a small business, you don’t back your data up properly. (note, I said properly, read below for clarification).

I was at the offices of EasyPark, the company where I park my car. I had loaned my transponder to a friend  and he promptly lost it. (Thanks Scott) Fine, $50 later, and I had a shiny new one. While I was waiting for the receptionist to get me my change, I noticed that there was a backup tape sitting on the reception desk. Clearly marked “Backup”, “Normal 1″, and “to Vault”. Now, since it’s just a tape, most people would think, “hey, neat tape”, or “someone left a tape on the desk”, but since I pay for my parking every month via my credit card, I would bet a months parking that my credit card is on that tape somewhere. When the receptionist returned I thanked her for my change, and as I left, I politely asked her to not leave my credit card number on the reception desk.

From Their Website:  ”EasyPark presently manages 38 facilities, totaling over 9,300 parking spaces and ranging in size from 20 to 1,577 spaces. We manage premier parkades within the city, including Pacific Centre, Pacific Centre North, Gastown, Library Square, YWCA & Yaletown.“

9300 Parking spaces.. That’s a lot of customer information.. Lets see who owns them.

“Since then, the Parking Corporation of Vancouver/EasyPark, as it now exists, is jointly owned by the City and the Downtown Vancouver Association (DVA). This share structure gives the City sole title to the assets of, and the revenues generated by, the Corporation; while the DVA provides the business expertise to conduct the affairs of the Corporation. It is governed by a board of two appointed and twelve elected directors.“

That was a long walk to make an important point. Making backups is not enough. I bet that they have an awesome backup system. Cleaning tapes, weekly rotations, the whole shooting match. BUT you need to also manage them, know where they are, know who are the people who have their hands on them. This is especially true if you have probably signed an agreement with, say, a bank. An agreement that states you will treat the credit cards of your clients with some kind of security. just saying..

I still think that Sarah Palin thing has legs tho..

backups, security backups, credit card, easy park, palin, security