The hidden cost of “bad IT”

I recently met with a prospect considering firing his IT Managed Services Provider. Often, this is due to a recurring service delivery failure of some sort, but more frequently, the reason is a breakdown in communication. In those cases, it is usually a problem between the business owner and the MSP’s management. In previous columns, I have advocated for frequent and regular meetings between the client and the service provider to avoid such misunderstandings.  

In this instance, the reason for the prospect’s displeasure was that employees were reporting frustration and threatening to resign over “Bad IT.” Employees frequently complained that instead of helping them do their jobs better, their IT systems were actually getting in the way of productivity. My prospect was willing to break a longstanding business relationship with their MSP, “even if your fees are higher.” 

Our technical assessment of the prospect’s IT infrastructure indicated that the incumbent MSP was technically at the top of its game; however, we heard nothing but bad feedback about their communication with the employees.  

Some businesses and their employees see more value in their IT than others. Consulting and user satisfaction survey software company, Green Elephant, wanted to find out why. They surveyed nearly 100,000 IT users globally, at all levels of responsibility, to find out their biggest IT complaints and how businesses could address them to derive more value. It turns out, getting back to basics is the key.

“What we wanted to do was emphasize that, to bring greater business value from IT, you have to take user satisfaction and your users’ needs into consideration, first and foremost. It’s about trust and being able to meet basic user needs; if your users’ basic needs aren’t being met, they won’t trust you to introduce new, cutting-edge and innovative technology, and they won’t use it,” Green Elephant CEO Chapleau said. “One thing we saw come up again and again in our survey and in some of the comments was that when people contacted the help desk, they were made to feel that they were interrupting, that the help desk personnel were too busy, or even that the help desk staff was rude. We have to ask ourselves, ‘Are we doing 80 percent of a service without following through? Why? And instead of helping, are we making things worse?'” 

Would your employees agree with the results of the Green Elephant survey? If you are like most businesses, you are investing around $25,000 per employee per year in IT systems and support. Could your IT ROI be significantly improved by having IT that made things better for your employees? My prospect thought so.