IT—The Business Partner You Didn’t Know You Had

The work that’s going on in your IT department is fundamentally shaping the success of your company. It has emerged as one of the most important sectors in today’s economy and you can get ahead of the competition by learning how to connect with your IT department. 

Your IT department handles everything from making sure your internal networks stay up and running, ensuring that your websites and applications function smoothly. This has them working deep within your company’s back-end operations as well as in customer-facing positions. Your IT department is building a unique insight into your business that you can leverage.

Here’s how you can realize the potential in your IT department. 

The Truth Behind Your IT Department

The IT department is no longer just another department seen as the cost of doing business expense. Your IT department has actually become one of the most important profit drivers for your business.

IT departments have gone from fixing printers and tinkering with internal phone lines to making sure your customers and clients have the exact experience they’re looking for. IT has move from the sidelines to front and center when it comes to operations, efficiency, and profit.

Gone are the days when it took a room full of book keepers transcribing every transaction into a ledger and then manually calculating the company accounts; or having to attract customers be personal contact or placing your product in a store.

Computerization has fundamentally changed how companies not only manage the company but also how they access customers.

Where IT Sits in Today’s Business World 

Do you know that your IT department has the biggest impact on how customers perceive your company? When your customers first check out your business, they’re getting their first impression from your websites, your apps, and other digital technologies that your IT department is responsible for cultivating. Some may argue that the marketing department is responsible for these digital technologies, but it is the IT department that translates the marketing departments specification and brings those website and apps into existence.

As key aspects of our Industries have moved into the digital realm, IT departments have likewise seen their responsibilities and their importance shift. Being able to connect with your IT department is an absolute necessity that separates today’s most successful companies from those who feel like they’re stuck in a pre-digital past. 

This leaves us with one big question. How do you communicate with your IT department? 

How to Communicate with Your IT Department 

IT departments have a reputation for being tech “nerds” stuck in their silos, but this perception is actually due to a communications breakdown. 

IT is an incredibly specialized field. These software and technology experts need to handle everything from server hardware specs to coding for websites and apps. It’s not that they are naturally isolated, but that their work is difficult to translate back to executive level staff. 

Here’s how you can overcome this communication barrier. 

Learn the Basics of IT

The best way to connect with your IT department is to learn how to speak “techy.” 

Now, you don’t have to learn how to code or start building computers from scratch, but you do need to know the nuts and bolts of this side of your business. Knowing the basics of how websites, apps, and networks operate will give you the linguistic tools you need to communicate with your IT staff. 

This opens up new insights into what goes on in those server rooms. You’ll be able to get a better grasp on the work being done by your IT department and better connect that labor with your overall goals and operations. 

Hire Someone Who Speaks Tech

Don’t have the time to learn what a SAST Analysis Report is? This is where you can skip the tutorials and hire someone who can speak both tech and business. 

There’s plenty of technology experts out there that have shifted their careers away from maintaining networks and coding applications to working in finance, marketing or business adminstration. These experts have vital insight into what’s going on in your IT department as well as the ability to translate these technical topics to the rest of the company.

These employees do a great job of bridging this highly specialized divide.

Leveraging Your IT Department

Now that you’re speaking the same lingo as your IT department, what are you doing to better leverage the work that they’re doing?

If your IT department is just there to change the ink in your printers, then you’re not getting the most out of these technical experts. We’re living in a digital age and this means that we need to take every advantage we can get when it comes to working in cyberspace.

Here are three key areas where your IT department can improve your operations. 

Improving Products, Interactions, and Marketing 

Your IT department has the finger on the pulse when it comes to what’s going on with your products and services. Not only are they the ones that are physically implementing the strategies developed by your marketing department, but they’re also the people in charge of the technology that handles your sales, bookings, and other interactions with your clients.

This makes your IT department the focal point of your business. 

Rather than pushing the IT department further into their silo, you can bring them out and have them play a more central role in these important customer-focused interactions. With so much of today’s business happening online, it is more important than ever that your IT department has a seat at the table when it comes to discussing new strategies for increasing your revenue. 

Their insights into your digital presence will prove to be invaluable the next time your company sits down to decide on the next course of action. 

Excluding IT from this process is like assembling a jigsaw puzzle knowing you are missing an import piece.

Lowering Risks

The IT staff are now front-line employees when it comes to mitigating the risks that your company faces. Your IT staff are at the front-line battling cyber criminals, protecting your company assets, and keeping your client’s information safe.

It all starts with the fact that so much of our business has shifted into the digital realm. Even if you’re not processing digital sales, you still have internal servers that are housing customer data as well as sensitive financial information. If your business suffers a data breach in this information it’s leaked to the outside world, your company could be facing serious financial problems.

Hacks and data breaches are leading causes for damages to a company’s reputation. They can also be the source of expensive and time consuming lawsuits. Your IT department maintains a core aspect of your company’s overall security. 

Controlling Costs

Your IT department also has an important role to play when it comes to controlling your costs. It might not seem like your IT department has a lot of pull when it comes to your overhead, but you’d be surprised how involved the IT departments of businesses across the country are.

Even the most basic IT departments are constantly balancing complicated scheduling processes using resource demanding tasks. The development lifecycle for websites and applications is dynamic and constantly shifting. The scheduling and planning expertise that’s being developed in your IT department is something that the rest of your company can take advantage of when it comes time to control some costs.

Your IT department is also developing unique insights into the overall operations of your company. They have been busy implementing your digital presence, they’ve also been gathering data and observing how their work connects to your company at large. One of the smartest moves to make is to take advantage of all of the R&D potential that is waiting in your IT department 

IT is the New Status Quo—Embrace The Potential 

If there is one take away for how you can change your relationship to your IT department, it’s that the new status quo of global business is based on this technology. Could you company continue to operate without computers or the Internet?

We’re all online and we’re all looking to do business in the digital world. Your IT department can connect you with exciting and new potential as long as you take the time to learn how to communicate with them. 

About the Author

Jay LaBonte is the award-winning author of the bestselling book, Your Guiding Genius: Building A World Class Team. Jay holds a Master’s Degree in Computer Information Systems and is a Certified Employment Law Specialist. With over thirty years experience managing teams of all sizes in various industries, he is no stranger to team leadership and has raised the bar on team building. Mr. LaBonte currently provides IT consulting services through Paradigm Systems, LLC. and is one of the foremost experts on Multivalue database performance tuning and administration. You may contact him by visiting www.paradigm-systems.us.

Does your Disaster Plan include your Cloud Provider shutting you down?

Many businesses rely on cloud services to keep their data secure and provide the technology infrastructure that keeps their business running from day to day. What would you do if your cloud provider simply shut you down, permanently?

This is the problem Parler is facing first hand, following the suspension of services by the AWS cloud hosting service provider. Amazon AWS announced that it would no longer be providing services to Parler for allegedly violating its terms of service. The news came shortly after what AWS considered a hate-filled rant posted on the Parler network about a video by Mitchell Obama criticizing Donald Trump’s leadership when he was president. Parler, a popular social media platform frequented by conservatives, had recently begun garnering a huge following, which AWS has been shut down without warning and is now on the verge of disappearing, even though Parler is protected from liability of user generated posting under section 230, in the same way Facebook and Twitter are protected.  

With a market dominated by only a few providers such as Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure or Oracle Cloud, if your provider shuts you down and the other providers refuse to take you on as a client, what are you to do?

The Amazon AWS shutdown of Parler has only amplified the fear and ambiguity surrounding cloud outage and downtime. As the industry tries to assess the aftermath of such cloud outages and the impacts they have on users, we are impelled to think that if such powerful providers can shut down a business at a moment’s notice based on what one of that businesses clients did, they could do this to any site hosted on their system.

As for the Amazon AWS and Parler issues, this is for the courts to decide. This article is only using this as an example, as to what could happen if cloud providers are permitted to shut your business down based on a violate of their terms and conditions.

Realistically, there may be a very small probability that your services would be shut down in such a manner, but it is something that we should all consider. Especially if you are using a smaller third-party cloud provider, unaware that they are subcontracting hosting services from AWS or one of the other primary providers. You may think you are on some private companies cloud service when in fact you are hosted as a group amoung other clients on an AWS or other providers servers and are subject to their terms and conditions. So, what happens if your small cloud provider has a client that violates the AWS policies and your cloud provider is shutdown, with you along for the ride?

One common mistake that customers who subscribe to cloud hosting services make is to assume that aspects like data protection, privacy, and compliance are their service providers’ responsibilities. However, Service Level Agreement (SLA) guidelines put most of the responsibility on the customers’ shoulders in times of crisis. A cloud outage can range from a few seconds or minutes, to hours if not days. During this period, all or some of the cloud infrastructure services may be unavailable for client use.

Just because you run your services are on the cloud, doesn’t mean you won’t experience an outage. In March of 2018 Amazon Web Services experienced an outage that affected IT solutions providers Atlassian, Slack and Twilio and also affected its own voice assistant, Alexa for several hours. On January 24, 2019 Microsoft Office 365 became unavailable, affecting 1.2 billion users and just under a week later they had a second outage. In March 2019, Googles Gmail service was down for 4.5 hours.

A few minutes of no email services may be uncomfortable for a company but not detrimental. But can your company withstand more than a day of no email services? Maybe. But what about a service outage of days or weeks? Assuming you have a valid contract with your cloud provider and your cloud vendor is in violation of that agreement for whatever reason. It can take days or even months to resolve the issue in court, let alone getting a court ruling. So, what happens to your business during this period? Will you have access to your backups? Are you heavily dependent on the cloud providers API’s and other software?

So how can you minimize the risk of your business being brought to it knees by a cloud outage? You may want to consider hosting on multiple cloud services if your business is time-sensitive. This prevents you from being locked into a single provider. It is also advisable to stay away from custom API’s provided by your cloud vendor. Cloud providers often provide API’s to make it easier to develop your services, but they also serve to lock you into their platform. Consider utilizing open-source technology so that you can run the same software on several cloud platforms, which helps simplify disaster recovery efforts. In some cases, using open-source solutions may require additional cost for development and maintenance, but in the event of a disaster, it will be money well spent.

Another aspect of disaster preparation is backups. While your cloud services provider may back up the data for you, they may not always be obligated to do so. Just as you would backup on premise databases, you should also regularly back up whatever you store in the cloud, such that valuable data is maintained and not lost in the event of a cloud failure. It is important to ensure you back up software and data to a location that is not controlled by the same cloud vendor. This ensures access to your software and data in the event of a cloud provider outage, and prevents the provider from holding your data hostage, pending determination by the courts.

If you absolutely want to have complete control over your environment, then it may be time to do away with cloud services entirely and go back to traditional systems and focus on managing data using in-house servers. After all, on-site premise servers like company websites have been and continue to be used by many organizations and employees to store data and are backed up using tapes and/or hard drives. This way, you have all the control of your data and resources but you can still be affected by unexpected outages and downtime. However, the major concern with storing an organization’s data on-premises is security. A fire or other natural disaster could also take your business offline.

So, should you consider bringing your services back inhouse? Probably not. The cloud offers many advantages to inhouse hosting. Scaled capacity, secure facilities and redundant internet and power connections are key advantages to cloud-based hosting. However, even if you are using cloud providers to host your services, it is best to heed the age-old adage, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”. Make sure you perform regular backups of your software and data to a location where you have access, should your cloud provide become inaccessible. Just because you are using a cloud provider does not mean your business is safe from disaster.

About the Author

Jay LaBonte is the award-winning author of the bestselling book, Your Guiding Genius: Building A World Class Team. Jay holds a Master’s Degree in Computer Information Systems and is a Certified Employment Law Specialist. With over thirty years’ experience managing teams of all sizes in various industries, he is no stranger to team leadership and has raised the bar on team building. Mr. LaBonte currently provides IT consulting services through Paradigm Systems, LLC. and is one of the foremost experts on Multivalue database performance tuning and administration. You may contact him by visiting http://www.paradigm-systems.us.

George Orwell’s 2018

George Orwell’s 1984 depicted a population controlled by the government with an all-seeing Big Brother keeping tabs on everyone. He was off by 34 years. His book should have been called 2018, and rather than focusing on the Government, he should have focused on big business.

Big Brother is alive and well today, and it’s not just a popular TV show, its big business. Amazon, Google, and Apple are just a few examples. Even Facebook is collecting personal and sometimes intimate details about its customers.

Technology is Helpful Yet Delicate

Granted, all these devices and services are supposed to make it easier for consumers to use technology. But what people forget is that Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Big Data technologies allow these companies to collect enormous amounts of information about their customers, that they can then leverage to make more sales, and even socially engineer your thoughts and feelings towards a product or services, or worse still, for a political candidate of their choice.

While everyone is complaining about security in the cities and the government overreaching its citizens, they are ignoring the fact that big businesses are standing on the sidelines collecting all the information they can about you, and can easily manipulate your thoughts and opinions to further their political agenda.

Right to Privacy

With advancements in AI and big data analytics, people should be aware of how much they are freely waving their rights to privacy by installing numerous apps in their mobile devices like smartphones, tablets, smart watches, computers, and now even on their kitchen appliances like refrigerators. Meaning, these devices are constantly listening or maybe even watching you.

How AI Can Socially Engineer Your Thoughts

The surprisingly deep connection between humans and machines means that even today’s relatively simple apps can exert a significant social influence on the population—for good or ill. Now, if big business wants you to buy more products, they simply engage a guided selling approach to increase sales, and if they want more engagement, they create interactive content that makes visitors go from a few seconds to an hour or more every day.

As much as many multinational corporations are striving to build AI systems that focus on positive behavior, unfortunately, the commercial forces driving technology are not often benevolent. These giant businesses at the forefront of AI technology—e-commerce, social media, and search engines—drive their share value by improving traffic, consumption, and addiction to the technology. Their intention is not ill, but the competitive nature of capital markets may push them towards AI hell-bent to influence your behavior towards their goals, even if that goal is political.

Social media is now a powerful tool in changing human beliefs and behavior. When you focus on building a huge advertising business by entangling politics, half-truths, and trivia, you can bring marvelous changes to the society without pestering or persuading anybody.

Was Your Vote Engineered by AI?

Artificial Intelligence has always raised ethical issues since it can be used to influence an individual’s thoughts and decisions. During the US presidential elections in 2016, AI massively came into play as the Cambridge Analytica Data Science Company rolled out an elaborate advertising campaign targeting persuadable voters by taking advantage of their individual psychology.

They used big data and machine learning to send different messages to voters based on the machine’s predictions about voters’ susceptibility to various arguments. So, those susceptible to paranoia received messages propagating fear while individuals with a conservative inclination received messages based on community and tradition. This could only be made possible by the massive footprints and behavioral patterns people leave behind on the internet regarding their relationships and consumption patterns.

Now, what I find interesting is that if the government was to demand installation of AI devices and begin to listen to your phone calls, most people would view it as an invasion of privacy and call for social activism. However, the same people will return to their homes and share the most intimate details of their lives while a tiny, unobtrusive device such as Alexa or Google Home, which sits quietly listening to every word, waiting for someone to speak its name, all without a warrant.

Bottom Line

With AI, Technology companies have quite a bit of information about you. For instance, Google snuck codes into adverts that would install tracking cookies on your devices without your knowledge. They have access to nearly every Wi-Fi password in the world, thanks to Android technology. Additionally, Google and Apple can track your device’s location with GSM-based technologies. Now, the government is rumored to be spying on technology companies to get their share of the information as well. You can imagine the potential treasure the big businesses could reap by just snooping into your Dropbox, Google drive, Gmail, and every other online platform that you subscribe to. So, it’s your responsibility to minimize the information you freely share with big business through your smart devices and mobile apps and shake off the manipulating hand of big brother.

I’m not against the use of products like Amazon’s Echo or Google Home. I think it is a wonderful technology and has the potential to do real good in this world. But people must take responsibility for their actions when using these AI systems. Whatever you search for online, store on the cloud, or ask Alexa about, just remember, your search is not private. There are people behind the tools you are using, and when people are involved, anything can happen.

As C.S. Lewis once said, “Spying on people by magic is the same as spying on them in any other way.” Today’s technology is clearly the magic used by big business.