Month: December 2015

December truly is the most wonderful time of the year.  I particularly like the time between Christmas and New Years.  For B2B businesses like ours, the last week of the year allows us to merge into the slow lane along with customers more focused on PTO hours than IPO dollars.  While I admittedly use some of this time to plan for the new business year, I use most of it to do some serious soul searching.  To ponder the year soon to pass and the one to soon be grasped.  Had I known then what I know now, what would I have done differently?  What do I need to know now in order to squeeze every drop of destiny out of the coming year?

This month, in anticipation of my most wonderful week of the year, my mind went to goal-setting and my memory went back almost fifty years ago to Mt. Tabor Elementary School in New Albany, Indiana.  Before my young basketball career came to an inauspicious end, I looked forward to getting a new pair of Converse All-Star tennis shoes at the start of the season.  Oh how I loved those shoes!  Back then, they only came in white, but I recently bought myself a too cool for school pair of red Converse high-tops.  And, the memories came flooding in…

…we were playing our crosstown rival when suddenly I found myself in possession of the ball.  I’m not sure if I actually stole it or if the opposing player accidently passed it to me.  Either way, I was absolutely sure of what I needed to do next.  So, I shifted my All-Star peds into overdrive and headed to the rack.  As my one shining moment unfolded, I could hear the roar of the crowd and see my name headlining the sports page in the New Albany Tribune.  No doubt, the fans were thinking the same thing I was –HE…COULD…GO…ALL…THE…WRONG WAY!  Yes sports fans, this Mt. Tabor Tiger ran as fast as he could and jumped as high as he could in a misguided, albeit heroic, effort to reach the opposing team’s goal.

Little wonder why not long thereafter, I traded in my beloved shoes on a pair of Speedos, preferring the cold, wet and chlorinated life of a swimmer to that of a directionally challenged basketball player.  That proved to be a great move, one that continues to this day.  Swimming remains my primary form of exercise.  Lord willing, I’m determined to continuously swim my age in minutes until I trade in Carmel’s Monon Center pool on a true infinity model with an eternal warranty.

What about you?  What are you hoping to find at the end of the earthly portion of your spiritual journey?  In doing your own soul searching this time of year, how certain are you about the goals you’re striving for?  As I once was, could you possibly be running fast and jumping high towards the wrong goals…ones that at the end of your days won’t matter any more than my one not-so-shining moment on the hardwood?

Wherever you are in your spiritual journey, this is a great time of year to consider a course correction.  If you’ve yet to pass through Bethlehem on your way to Calvary, I commend that leg of the journey to you.  From the Christmas manger (Luke 2) to the Good Friday cross (Matthew 27) to Easter’s empty tomb (John 20), Jesus of Nazareth did more to change the world than anyone who ever lived.  That’s why His story, as told in the Bible, is so much a part of our history.  And, that’s why intellectually honest seekers have sought to understand it for over two millennia.

Beyond the Bible, there have been countless books written about the historical Jesus and what it means to have a relationship with Him.  One at the top of my reading list is, Since Nobody’s Perfect . . . How Good Is Good Enough?  by Andy Stanley.  Should you choose to take the Bethlehem to Calvary trek, throw this book in your backpack.  It will serve you well as an easy-to-read trail map.

All to say, happy trails to you and yours in 2016.  I truly hope our paths cross, as together we run fast and jump high towards the right goals.  I can hear the crowd now –HE…COULD…GO…ALL…THE…WAY!  And I believe they’re absolutely right…again.

 

 

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Whatever business you’re in and however tech-centric you’ve been, you’re more so today than you were yesterday and you’ll be more so tomorrow than you are today. And so IT goes, until one day we awaken to the reality that we’re all in the technology business. At that point (and it’s not a distant one), how we do IT will be THE critical success factor in determining how well we do in business and whether we’ve earn the right to continue being in business at all.

So, if technology is increasingly part of every business’s core, can we expect to see more or less outsourcing of IT? Logic says less. After all, the business case for IT outsourcing was been built upon the premise that IT was not core to most businesses. If it is becoming so, then the case for outsourcing IT is becoming weaker by the day. Enter the case for IT insourcing.

Tech companies do all they can to protect their intellectual property, but there are serious limits in their ability to do so. The harsh reality for any tech company is that most of their true IP exists between their employees’ ears. And, each of those brilliant minds comes with a pair of legs that can transport highly valued employees to another employer (or worse, a competitor), on two weeks’ notice. Then you realize that your born again tech company is frighteningly dependent upon those techies that have so unnerved you all these years. Hmmm, what’s a reluctant tech titan to do? Outsource IT and pretend that IT really isn’t core to your business? No…

…you need to insource IT…or at least those parts of IT clearly tied to what you now consider core to your business. For example, if you’re a Big Pharma company, new drug R&D is likely core to your business. So, you should probably consider insourcing most of the IT functions that support R&D. That doesn’t mean bringing your scientists’ desktop support back in-house after years of outsourcing IT. That’s unnecessary because desktop support doesn’t create a strategic advantage within the R&D function. However, the systems by which research scientists share their findings and collaborate amongst themselves might. The design, development and support of such systems could be a good candidate for insourcing.

So, by insourcing am I saying that every person involved with an insourced function must be an employee? No, but all non-employee members of an insourced project team should be eligible for hire at any time, at the client’s discretion. Conversion terms should be straight forward, affordable and pre-determined AND there should be no “sacred cows”. Meaning, all consultants are eligible for conversion, not just a subset hand-picked by their employers. It also means that the consulting firm won’t engage in any backroom monkey business meant to dissuade the consultant from accepting a fulltime offer.

Now, let’s apply this insourcing model to that Big Pharma company’s R&D collaboration system project which requires:

• Project Manager (PM)
• Business Analyst (BA)
• QA Tester (QA)
• Developers (Qty. 4)

The client currently has a BA and two junior developers available for the project, so their insourcing partner provides a PM, a QA and two senior developers to complete the team. As the project nears completion, the client wants to convert one of the two senior developers in order to retain their critical knowledge of the system. They choose the one who had the best chemistry with the junior developers while effectively training them throughout the project. Since the BA is a solid long term employee who now possesses valuable subject matter knowledge of the new system, they believe her knowledge is sufficient to compensate for the absence of the Project Manager who’s scheduled to roll off. The QA tester, though no longer critical to the new system, did such an excellent job that the client decided to convert and redeploy him to an entirely new project. So, two of the four consultants utilized on this project were ultimately converted to fulltime employees, thereby allowing the client to retain mission critical intellectual capital created during the project and two proven performer new employees.

And that’s why we say if you think IT’s all about outsourcing…think again. Think insourcing, because however tech-centric you think you are today, you will be more so tomorrow…come to think of IT.

View our current December newsletter for more information regarding this topic: If You Think It’s All About Outsourcing…Think Again!

Supporting Links:

Why Software Is Eating The World
Everyone is a Technology Company
Enterprise IT Swings Back to Insourcing[/fusion_text][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]