HumanIT Blog

A painter steps back from his canvas every 10 minutes. Companies spend thousands of dollars on focus groups. Why?

Outsourcing your IT can offer to a number of benefits and lead more impact and efficency in your organisation. The infographic below explains how to get more out of your IT support services.

The ‘cloud’, the mystical vapour in which all our data will be tied up in the future. The question is how do we smoothly enter the cloud and avoid the potential storm in may put upon our company. The process of converting to the cloud is like moving house, there are a number of things to consider before moving house and it is not a decision to take lightly. If it is not done correctly it has the potential to waste time, money and resources. So what are the key mistakes Not for Profits (NFPs) are making and how can we avoid them?

Only 29% of IT projects are successfully completed. Think about that. All that time and money invested into projects that were doomed from the start.

At Human IT we’ve established a rock-solid framework for getting projects out the door on time and on budget. This was achieved because we were aware – and cautious about - the most common mistakes when it comes to IT project management.

So let’s go through them and suggest some remedies. We’ll start off with the main offender:

Any Not for Profit organisation will tell you they value keeping up with modern technology as best as they can. However, research has shown that 25 per cent of Australian NFPs are lagging behind when it comes to staying up-to-date with today’s tech.

This could be for a number of reasons. The most common   issues facing the NFP clients that Human IT engages with all come down to unfamiliarity. It makes sense. The tech  environment is constantly evolving, changing and  morphing at a rapid pace. If you’re not in the industry or you don’t pursue technology as a hobby then it’s very easy to fall out of the loop. We get this. At Human IT we don’t just implement – but strive to educate.

According to a survey conducted earlier this year, most Not  for Profit organisations “have difficulty in securing skilled IT resources, determining where to direct their IT spend, and providing affordable training.” This tells us the problem is a layered one.

So let’s breakdown the 3 main challenges facing NFPs, and provide some solutions.

Believe it or not – the ‘cloud is insecure’ argument is still raging. A more accurate argument would be ‘people who don’t fully understand the technology are insecure’.

I recently met with a client that had a number of objections to converting to cloud computing. At Human IT we come across many organisations who aren’t sure exactly what to do with their data, and can easily stoop into paranoia when confronted with something they aren’t completely sure of - or comfortable with.

Luckily, we’re ready for this. I listened to all my client’s concerns and it become apparent that rather than being valid concerns they were essentially myths. With a little education from myself he soon found that moving to the cloud provided a number of great benefits, and his concerns either did not actually exist, or could be easily mitigated with some prudent thinking.

In speaking with our clients, it’s really interesting to hear how many leaders are interested in IT and have an intuition that it can help their organisation. They don’t need much convincing that IT can help. Many are even interested in how IT can change their business models and drive revenues. These leaders typically do one of three things:

I’ve just come from a great coffee with a long term client of ours and she said something very interesting… “OK, so what’s next?”

This article will attempt to introduce ‘the cloud’ and demonstrate the benefits that can be realised for an organization that decides to move to cloud based applications, platforms and/or infrastructure. The cloud has been truly ‘disruptive’ to the IT industry and has democratized high performance, low cost computing in every sector. 

Technological capability is one of the key internal functions that an organisation can use to leverage efficiencies, enablement and strategic advantage. Unfortunately, many not-for-profits find themselves overrun by just making existing systems work. This constraint can often lead to an inability to think innovatively as there is insufficient IT capability or capacity to drive change. Outsourcing the function be a smart and cost-effective way to overcome this hurdle and this blog will explain when and how an organisation can go about outsourcing certain elements of the IT function to enable growth and sustainability.