The Value of Holistic Service

In many of the IT Organizations I've serviced, the focus has been on running around like a chicken without a head as multiple fires are treated. All too often, the treatment amounts to little bandaids that help the business get through the day, but allows the wound to fester. In light of many of the available remote management tools such as Altiris, SMS, MOM, WSUS, CA Worldview, Dameware, VNC, Enteo, and Kaseya. Any shop that is still running around like a chicken without a head needs to educate the chickens that root cause analysis and a proactive, anticipatory approach to support will provide better business value. In the world of technology, there is always something new. The latest and greatest may not be the best thing, but there should be a mechanism in place for evaluating various products without implementing them into production environments. In light of virual machine environments capabilities, there is no legitimate excuse not to have some sort of testing/lab environment. Cost is not an acceptable excuse, as the cost of implementing something new into a production environment could very well cause a significant business impact that will result in downtime. No matter how you look at it, downtime always translates to a financial loss. So, what is a chicken to do? My answer is learn the apply the philosophy of Chinese medicine towards technology support. The cultural focus in this approach is on proactively keeping the patient healthy, as oppossed to just treating symptoms with radical measures or bandaids. The best thing a technology professional can do for their client is to really obtain an understanding of the client's business. Understand process flows and how the client earns a living. Once this concept is well understood, begin looking at how things flow and ask questions. Very often, this is a great way to uncover inefficiences that can be streamlined with some old fashioned re-engineering techniques. In my years of consulting, what thing that always holds true is that the client is often too close to the problem to really see it. This is where the consultant can come in and act like the therapist that holds up the mirror to convey to the client how they are living in the world. Furthermore, the real value of the holistic approach is that it helps to avoid many problems because it forces better planning and communication. This in turn, helps to build much stronger relationships. If the old adage, "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care" holds true, then the holistic service approach is a symbiotic winner across the board.