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4 methods to avoid being outsourced

How to keep your users happy and away from the competition

December 1996

Abstract

Much has changed since the days when IT managers ran all corporate services and users took what they were given. Today, users are more sophisticated, and if you intend to keep them as customers, you need to change to meet their perceptions. (1,300 words)

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MIS managers have a lot of skills that help their respective employers, but often, marketing, negotiating, and selling IT services are not among them. If you want to keep your users as customers of the internal IT department instead of some outsourcing agency, you'll need to hone your skills to work with them instead of dictating to them.

Traditionally, the role of the IT department was to determine what resources users needed and then provide for them under the guise of corporate services. This worked well for a long time in the mainframe days because we did know more than the users about what capabilities and rescues they needed. There was never a question about what resources users had -- IT provided all the hardware and software. There was no "selling" to the departments. Departments merely got what they were told they'd get. But that's changed.

Why does IT need to see its own corporate customers in a different light? The client/server paradigm and the emergence of third-party support operations have changed computing from the way we once knew it. Users became frustrated with the centralized MIS organization, and we began to pay the price for our past arrogance. IT services were costly, bureaucratic, and no matter what the customer wanted, all of their services came in one flavor: mainframe vanilla, which is costly and bland. It wasn't a pretty picture.

Today, everyone in IT needs a refresher course in customer satisfaction. First we need a simple definition of the customer. We define a customer as someone who is able to choose a service from a cafeteria-style menu of options with associated costs. It's as plain and simple as that.

So why is it so difficult for IT professionals to treat users as real customers? The obvious answer is that old habits are hard to break. The not-so-obvious answer is that IT professionals today do not have their collective act together and simply don't know how to work with sophisticated users who are used to getting what they want the way they want it.

Building a bridge to users
This is less a matter of corporate culture than it is a situation of infrastructure and perception. In most client/server-based IT shops we visit, we see a considerable amount of operational support chaos. On the one hand, IT does not seem to know how to manage its client/server resources. On the other, this bastion of glass-house mentality has not had the training required to manage this new computing environment.

In our previous articles, we've discussed the importance of deploying processes, standards, and procedures, but it seems like no one has the time to put these operations in place. Client/server applications are being deployed at breakneck speed, and users, who have been bombarded with hype about the simplicity and benefits of client/server, are impatient for immediate results. They often don't want to hear the IT staff argue for deploying new applications only after an appropriate infrastructure is in place.

In effect, users want immediate gratification and shy away from anything that resembles the "old bureaucratic approach" to IT. Instead, many users now prefer to pick and choose their own services, regardless of whether those services are readily available.

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Selling the infrastructure
If IT management plans to take control of software distribution once again, old processes must be streamlined, and new processes must be developed. Let's look at how an IT manager might approach the user base and sell this new infrastructure.

Master the art of marketing
In the nineties, marketing and sales must be incorporated into everyone's job description. You need to have excellent communications and negotiating skills, and you'd better be able to schmooze. That's how sales people establish relationships with their customers, and that's what IT professionals have to do with their customers.
Start small
Don't try to win over the world. Find friends in the user community with whom you can work. Let them help you refine and tune your infrastructure. Make them a part of your sales force when you talk to other users.
Know your competition
How do you know if your services are better and less expensive than an external vendor's offerings? You need to compare your services to other vendors'. What do they charge for the same types of services, such as desktop support, mission critical application support, network connection, and voicemail? Remember, in some companies, you might well be competing with outside vendors.
Provide a menu of service
The outcome of your benchmarking efforts will hopefully prove that your services are better and less expensive than those your competitors provide. Document these services and their associated costs, but go one step further and show what your competitor charges for the same services. Now your customer has a choice. In eight of ten cases, an internal customer would not go elsewhere even if your costs were higher than an external vendor's prices. But it's an issue of perception versus reality -- at least now they perceive they are in control. And who doesn't like to be in control?

Let's now consider desktop support and list the services you would provide. The list need not be sophisticated or lengthy. Remember, in times like these, keep things basic:

Services and Costs -- $12/day/person

Standard services -- $6/day/person

System administration
System security
Desktop application support
Hardware installation
Software distribution support
Telecommunications
User training
Local network services
Software configuration
Selected optional software
Database administration
Systems analysis
Performance and tuning

Disaster recovery

If we were customers, this is the kind of list we'd like to see, and we think your customer will want to see this too. Once they have this in hand, they probably won't even bother looking elsewhere, nor will they want to perform these functions on their own as many of them are doing today. Why should they, if you are that efficient? Your potential customers are feeling much pain trying to support their own environment. If you come in with the right product, they're yours for the taking.

While IT management must constantly brush up on marketing and selling skills, this is not something to which you can dedicate headcount. It needs to be incorporated into the already hectic day-to-day responsibilities. Who has time to schmooze users? You do, because you must if you want to survive the nineties and beyond. This is such a critical issue for IT managers that we'll examine more marketing and selling services in future articles.

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