Chad Whaley's Blog

A few weeks ago, I took a break from my Indianapolis IT Support practice and attended a morning seminar hosted by Franklin Covey entitled "The 4 Disciplines of Execution".  Although the event was a sales pitch for Franklin Covey's consulting services, I felt the speakers did a great job of providing a great balance of useful information with sales pitch for their system.  In other words, it was well worth my time.

In addition to taking away a few pointers on goal setting, leading and lagging measures, and setting accountability, I noted that they had a software program that they recommended using to track and follow their system throughout their consulting engagement.  This interested me because it reinforced an idea that technology, specifically IT technology, can be helpful at all levels of organizations.  It can even help organizations set and achieve goals when implemented correctly.  I doubt however, that the technology alone would make a client successful.  It was only one piece to a proven system that Franklin Covey was offering which in it's entirety benefited their clients tremendously according to their statistics.

Does technology work for your business or organization?  Too often I've seen technology or the lack of technology work against prospective clients.  Instead, organizations often cobble together several systems that inefficiently meet their needs, but often restrains growth.  We've come across small business server Indiana clients using their server technology as a glorified desktop due to a lack of understanding of capability. 

I believe in a "solutions" approach to technology.  When I say solutions, I mean hardware, software and human interaction to help implement technology that will solve business problems or provide a foundation to enhance efficiency or improve sales.  Some common technology solutions:
 

• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System
• Trouble Ticket System
• Business Intelligence Management System
• Corporate Wikipedia
• Call Center Management/Reporting System

Most of the five things bulleted above require a mixture of hardware and software to be implemented, but more importantly they require engagement and buy in from both users and management to actually work.  The most expensive CRM system in the world is worthless if people do not enter, track and utilize the information stored in it.  I often find it is the human factor that determines if a new technology implementation is going to be a success.

Depending on the size of your organization, I recommend including someone from both management and the front lines of your organization to work in conjunction on the planning and implementation of new technology.  Make sure that the new technology being implemented is one component to implementing a new solution to a common small business problem.

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