designed for medium enterprises

ict4me has been designed from the start to address the typical ICT issues which SME’s face in day-to-day life. Limited ICT staff. Undocumented services. Non existing service levels. Management distraction. Speed of technology evolution. Diversity of vendors and providers. Long intervention and resolution times. Backlog of projects. Increasing dependency on ICT. Breakdown after office hours.

Although on paper, an in-house ICT department for an SME may seem cheaper than an outsourced arrangement, the hidden costs are often considerably underestimated, particularly in terms of management distraction and time.

In-house ICT has been the practical ‘default’ arrangement for the management of ICT by small to medium enterprises (SMEs) since the growth of end-user computing. Some smaller components of ICT service delivery are often outsourced (e.g. network management) but in the main a significant number of tasks (e.g. operational server management, workstation maintenance) are performed by internal staff for many SMEs.

However, internal ICT staff often genuinely want to help the business and so they provide ‘undocumented’ services to the business. For example, the ICT department might install a new printer in the general manager’s office and while they’re there, they help the manager with a spreadsheet, or show his personal assistant how to use Word to develop a macro for the board reports.

The result of this arrangement is that the business often does not know what the ICT staff do and therefore does not value their output. The ICT staff’s budget is limited, and so they help the business by building solutions ‘in their spare time’. Despite all the work, long hours, and frustration, the backlog of official projects never reduces. In extreme cases, resentment and misunderstanding build between end users and the ICT staff.

Finally, it is exceptionally difficult for a small ICT department to adopt and implement best practices and formal service management frameworks . Accordingly smaller ICT departments beat their own path to service delivery, which can often mean that tasks are carried out in an ad hoc manner.