Two Roles of IT, and Why You Need Them Both
In general, there are two roles of IT: reactive and proactive.
Your business needs both of these roles. Ignore one and you will have a problem, either now or later.
The Reactive Role
This is IT as fix-it person: supporting users, administering systems, hooking up new PCs and printers, and replacing parts. This role keeps your systems and users working. Reactive IT is a necessary cost center, with little return on investment.
The Proactive Role
This is IT as business strategist: planning for contingencies, improving productivity, adding capabilities, ensuring compliance and security, advising on emerging technologies, identifying business issues and potential solutions. This role helps you reach business goals and requires a high-level viewpoint on technology and business. Proactive IT is a business asset and can significantly improve your bottom line with reduced cost or increased revenue.
A recent study suggests that as businesses trim costs, IT managers at small companies are spending nearly 60% of their time on administrative tasks. When business leaders do not identify and value the proactive role, resources end up funneled into a reactive maintenance mode. If the IT managers in this study are skilled enough to be proactive, their companies are wasting a valuable resource and hampering long-term growth.
If you have an IT staff in house, what role do they fill? Are you compensating them correctly for that role? Depending on their skill level, consider outsourcing to free up internal staff or to provide proactive strategy. If you don’t have internal IT staff, be sure your outsourced service providers have the team-based expertise necessary to attend to both roles.
Along the lines of my prior comment, it may be helpful to think about in-house IT staff vs. outsourced IT staff as fixed vs variable costs again.