Innovative Visions

While many companies will often look at the direct costs associated with a technology upgrade (hardware, software, telecommunications), they rarely take into account the “soft” costs associated with training their employees on a new system. Even more important, companies are just starting to realize the real benefits and increased revenue from training their employees on a new system. However, what about making an investment in training your employees to more efficiently use your existing systems?

A new study conducted by researchers at MIT and Boston University (both in my fair city), analyzed how IT makes people more productive. (Keep in mind the study was funded by major technology companies Cisco and Intel, among others. However, it has been recognized by the International Conference on Information Systems as the best paper of late.)

The study comprised 125,000 email messages, five years of project data and survey responses from a cross section of respondents. You can read a decent ComputerWorld interview with Co-Author Marshall Van Alstyne here and abstracts from the study here and here. While it is most certainly a good idea to train your employees on any new systems you have, think about doing so for your current systems as well. Alstyne summarizes:

“Invest in IT skills. High IT skill levels reduce the perception of information overload and facilitate multitasking, which is directly associated with increases in revenue. But don’t necessarily expect high IT users to be faster in project completions. The real impact is that they’re doing so much more. It’s total projects completed, not time per project.”

Although there is a tipping point where productivity starts to decrease due to too much multitasking, I couldn’t have said it better than Alstyne does here. How many of your users really know how to effectively multitask with your existing systems? Start with training them on the current systems a bit more and see what results they produce… I’m curious to hear about the results.

ComputerWorld.com released a special report last July discussing the future of IT jobs and what we can expect in 2010. I recently came across the various articles produced by the results of this study and want to share some relevant insight. The researchers’ primary focus concentrated on how to keep up with the outsourcing trend and the increased need for continual training in raw IT skills. While it draws some good conclusions (and is certainly worth reading), it fails to discuss what is really at the core of this issue and where we can all help to ensure proper industry growth with shared profitability AND responsibility.

IT careers, whether now or in 2010, are about more then just raw skills and “keeping up” with the India’s and China’s of our expanding world. While I have yet to read Thomas Friedman’s new book, “The World is Flat: The Expanded Edition” it is on top of my crowded list. From an initial look, his discussion focuses more on information, knowledge and cultural understanding than it does on ensuring your people have the latest XML skills. I believe most changes in the IT job market can be tracked, corrected and taken advantage of by understanding the cultural shifts affecting us.

Whether your company is domestic, international or multinational there are certain job functions best performed by certain people. If you are worried about your job being outsourced, it is just as likely that it will be outsourced domestically as it will internationally so let’s instead concentrate on what you can do to prepare and continue on with your career. Instead of trying to keep up on your certifications, learn the latest and greatest ERP packages and spend weeks in classes to further develop your integration skills, try a different approach… who knows, it might actually work!

No matter where a company conducts its business, there are certain cultural issues prevalent in every environment. Concentrate your efforts instead on furthering your knowledge of various cultures so that you are a resource in demand to facilitate and bridge the cultural gaps when outsourcing of basic and key IT functions does happen; and it will happen sooner or later. I’m not telling you to abandon your quest for greater IT knowledge, but make it relevant and useful! In other words, instead of concentrating on IT management, systems administration or storage configuration, concentrate instead on knowledge management and how you can bring the most value to your company; therefore securing your position through at least 2010. It is becoming more and more of a balancing act between those raw skills and business understanding. Why do you think “Business Analysts” are in such demand?

More on this later…