“When you do something right, no one will be sure you’ve done anything at all”
IT functions are the backbone of any organisation. When it is working you don’t notice it and when it’s not, all hell breaks loose.
A deprived IT function can effect your operations, customers, investors and most importantly your beneficiaries. It is time to invest some thought into how your IT function can add more impact, so we have gone ahead and summarised the top 3 areas of upmost importance.
Strategise It
There are few things in life you start without a plan in place, and it makes sense because having a plan allows for a better result, that’s why we write a shopping list before we go to the supermarket, less impulse buys and save time. Or we book our accommodation in advance for a holiday, allowing for more time to relax rather than worrying about where you will sleep. Plans are essential for more impactful outcomes.
Developing an IT plan or strategy is often overlooked. IT is expected to be something that ‘just works’ rather than an opportunity to enhance reach and impact. Having a rock-solid strategy on how best to utilise IT allows you to focus on the bigger picture including creating more innovative IT systems in order to maximize social impact.
These practical tips allow for the stepping-stones towards a strategic plan:
- Producing conceptual design and frameworks for board approval can be difficult for a technical-orientated IT manager. Have either an internal or outsourced advisor to help with creating a valuable strategic plan.
- Give your IT manager ample time to create an IT strategy and provide outside help to ensure day-to-day tasks are not disrupting the process.
- Ensure there is clarity and correct prioritisation when it comes to IT goals.
Improving the key drivers
Dropbox, Salesforce, Outlook, Citrix, Slack. Having the right application to support the team is fundamental to an effective business. Part of your IT strategy must be finding the time for the IT Manager to evaluate and improve the existing applications and identify new useful ones. The IT manager is the best person for this job as they would have direct understanding of the both the potential and the risk of each application. In many cases, the IT manager has not had time to work on this by once again having to deal with the ‘now’.
Train ‘Em Up
We are all guilty of it - rather than teaching someone to do something we just do it ourselves in order to get it over and done with quicker. This is happening in the IT function of all organisations. It makes sense. IT Managers don’t have time to explain the problem, resolve the issue and educate their colleagues, even though it would save time in the future.
Taking time out of the business-as-usual schedule and allocating time to staff training empowers the workforce both in terms of utilising applications and workforce productivity. It would also reduce end-user support demands on the IT team that are taking up precious hours of their day.
Human IT has worked with a number of NFPs and seen clearly how revitalising a deprived IT function can result in long term value for the social impact of an NFP.
This is a part of the reason Human IT specifically works with for-purpose organisations. Seeing how IT cannot only contribute to operations but to society as a whole - This is what drives us!
We delve into more detail on this topic in our eBook!
