There are further consequences for putting off IT projects: Existing technology becomes outdated and harder to support; talented people leave because there isn't enough new stuff going on to hold their interest; and when the time comes to update, the jump will be more than incremental, meaning the cost may be quite a bit higher than expected.
That said, Ries gets charged up when he talks about some of the projects he is heading. One is a million-dollar initiative to reduce errors in prescribing and dispensing medication to patients. Using bar codes, scanners and a wireless network, a database will keep track of prescriptions from issuance to treatment, in real time, ensuring the right medication gets to the right patient and in the right dosage and alerting physicians to dangerous drug interactions.
The system has been piloted in one nursing station. Five more stations will be tested this year, followed by a hospitalwide rollout early next year.
Later Bloomers Win
There are a few advantages in working for an organization that doesn't emphasize cutting-edge technology. Keven Williamson, assistant director of audio-visual services at Brigham Young University, says his budget has been spared the ax because IT is just getting to projects now that have been in place elsewhere for years.
"We're usually late adopters," he says. "As a result, we're still on an upward curve where others are over the bubble."
That's another key point: Mature technologies are more likely to get funding because their value can be quantified; not too sexy a way to do business, but effective, and we'll bet Williamson avoids some of the stress those riding the cutting edge usually have in vast quantities.
As unsettled as IT pros are for the moment, almost all of those interviewed say they're optimistic about their futures and confident they will get the funding they need to do their jobs. The public sector is still throwing money at business automation in the name of online self-service, for example, and the private sector is counting on productivity gains to revive profits, readers say. And those improvements rely on IT.
That may explain why technologists have managed to maintain control where the rubber meets the road, even if their influence is waning in the executive suite. When it comes to making technology choices, 53 percent say their opinions get serious consideration, and another 32 percent say the purchase doesn't happen without their buy-in.
We think that the 85 percent of you at a critical level of the purchase process have a unique opportunity to take that level of trust and expand on it. How? By evangelizing that the money being spent is not only buying the best technology solution, it is also solving a key business problem or furthering an initiative. To put it bluntly, if you want to maintain that position, you'd better start tying technology purchases to business processes.
Still, there's a difference between having a say in technology selection and having credibility when it comes to proposing new technology-driven projects. For example, network administrator Vanessa Hill has repeatedly offered to automate surveying of employees and clients of her nonprofit children's services organization, Progressive Life Center in Washington. She wants to turn the six-page paper surveys into online forms to improve participation, allow for easier change management and automate the tabulation of results.
Hill was preparing to present the idea to management for the third time in four years recently. "It's not that expensive, but trying to convince them to change the way they do things, it's like pulling teeth," she says.
Hill's tooth-pulling has worked in the past. When she wanted to roll out a remote-access desktop application to the masses, she started by demonstrating the application to the president of the company. "I let him take it home and he was able to connect to his desktop," she recalls. "That sold him."
Hill cites a great example of getting business-line folks to buy into a technology by showing them how it makes their lives better. In this case, she transformed a ho-hum remote-access project into a critical business productivity initiative simply by getting the president to believe in it. You can then "ride that wave" by tying other projects to this success; specifically, Hill could have linked a security initiative (either already in the works or created as part of this project), leveraging the good faith she already had with the president. Call it double-dipping if you want, but this is a proven tactic: When funding is tight, use cash-flush projects to their full advantage--not in the pork-barrel sense but to piggyback important initiatives that might not have a high-profile advocate.
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