Most technology services used at work, school, or home are looked at by users as commodity services, similar to water and electricity, they are simply expected to be available and work properly. When it comes to network; access to websites, chat services, e-mail (from both computers and smartphones – iPhone, Android, Windows based phones…) along with many other services are simply expected to work. People outside Information Technology (and sadly a few who are part of it) don’t understand or care, nor should they, how all these things work.
On the other hand, what happens when these services fail, when you can’t go online, or your computer doesn’t print; or even worse, you deleted a file by accident/your computer is constantly crashing and is infected with some type of malware. Who do you turn to and how well do they perform? Is your local team overworked or maybe they don’t work hard enough? Are they knowledgeable and responsive; can they help you with other non-standard questions, concerns and ideas? How helpful is your IT team, are they aware of your needs or are they more of a “dictatorship” (as the graphic above suggests) when it comes to what can be used and how? How responsive are they to your technical issues?
I’m always interested in streamlining and improving the things we do and support every day while at the same time finding additional resources to get involved into bringing new and interesting services to our clients. It is very important for IT staff to be valuable and contribute to the overall goals or otherwise they should be replaced, even outsourced*. If you work with a tech team of any kind (work, school, home…) please take a few minutes of your time to share what your experience has been and how they could improve.
* What can or should be outsourced and where (local vs. offshore) is a topic worthy of separate discussion at great length.