REAL-TIME FIELD AND ONSITE
COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM
When the Health Officers
Association of California needed a real-time communications
system, they
turned to Direct Technology.
Read more!
AUTOMATION OF COMPLEX OPERATIONS
PROCESSES
The California Human
Development Corporation was spending excess time on antiquated,
paperwork-heavy processes. Direct Technology automated their operations.
Read more!
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Direct Technology is hiring! Join a dynamic,
growing company with an excellent benefits
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AUGUST 2008
SMALL BUSINESS IT - AVOID BEING BLINDSIDED BY TECHNOLOGY
Three years ago, Bob Jones (not his real name) hired a software
engineer to build an application that he needed to catapult his
small business past the competition and ensure its continued
success. The engineer estimated that the application would take
four months to build and cost approximately $35,000. After
investing more than two and one-half years and close to
$250,000, the application still wasn’t finished. Bob finally
decided it was time to change course and fired the software
engineer.
This is an all too familiar storyline that I hear from small
business owners in my work as an information technology (IT)
consultant. The most difficult aspect of listening to these
tales is the knowing that they were almost always avoidable. In
order to prevent these IT calamities, small business owners need
to accept that they may have a few intellectual “blind spots”
and be willing to follow a few simple steps in order to avoid
them.
Technology
intellectual "blind spots"
A number of years ago at a business management class at
Stanford, I first learned about the concept of emotional
intelligence and the four sectors of the knowledge paradigm,
which are as follows:
In the $250,000 misadventure mentioned above, Bob thought that
he had enough information about his IT project to Know what he
Didn’t Know (KDK), and to compensate accordingly. However, he
soon realized that he did not have enough IT expertise to
evaluate the skills of the software engineer that he hired, or
the actual work he performed … much less the project framework
and management decisions made unilaterally by the engineer.
Bob’s actions are a good example of why Socrates often wrote
about the correlation between humility and intelligence, such as
when he penned, “I know that I am intelligent, because I know
that I know nothing.” Similarly, the adage “a little bit of
knowledge is a dangerous thing” is another way of describing
what Socrates was saying and is a common trap in the IT
industry.
A virtual CIO fills
the technology intellectual gaps
Had Bob been a little more realistic about his IT knowledge
(i.e. modest), he would have realized that it was a mile wide,
but only an inch deep, and was therefore better suited to the
Don’t Know we Don’t Know (DKDK) sector depicted above. Armed
with this wisdom, Bob’s plan of action should have included
acquiring both expert advice and oversight resources to ensure
the completion of his software application within his budget and
business requirements.
Direct Technology provides expert guidance and supervision on a
variety of IT projects and processes within its
Virtual
CIO service, which provides a tailored amount of
executive-level IT consulting over three or more months. Had Bob
engaged Direct Technology’s
Virtual
CIO service on this project, he would have invested as
little as $1,500. The return on this small investment would have
saved Bob from a number of sleepless nights, close to $200,000
in software development costs, and helped him capture the
competitive advantage that he still seeks, which is easily worth
another $150,000 in new business revenue annually.
for more information
about virtual cio services, contact larry cate at 800 347 2777 u.s. pst
or e-mail larry at
lcate@directtechnology.com.
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