Throwing off conventional thinking to re-imagine the IT manager role

In conventional patterns of thinking about jobs within businesses of 10 - 100 people, the role of IT manager is seen as the go-to person for anything related to technology.

Across an infrastructure demanding provision of business technology tools to a workforce of varying degrees of technological competence, this might include anything from a broken mouse to troubleshooting software server problems.

If you factor in responsibilities across multiple sites and mobile devices, computer ‘problems’ that are really training issues, and high volumes of incidents that may need to be appropriately prioritised, then the typical IT manager role may be characterised as that of a firefighter.

However, there is an alternative. The blog ‘Firefighter or Strategist: What is the IT Manager role in your firm?’ discusses this issue and provides some ‘blue sky’ thinking to re-imagine the role. Here we expand on this by exploring, in a little more depth, three things an IT manager is able to do better when the support required for the firm is outsourced to a specialist IT support Managed Service Provider.

• Better strategic focus
  
  

  Technology moves fast. Fact. And businesses often use multiple technology lines that are developed in isolation from each other. Consequently, firms may end up with a mix of legacy, half-life decayed and latest technologies woven into an organic patchwork that may not work well together.

  Regulated firms may have significant compliance challenges and an in-house subject matter expert may need to bring the firm’s plans together with the compliance framework and the technologies that are required.

  Simply put, the technology road map needs to be defined and firms need to have an insider that is technology-focused and able to plan strategically for appropriate mid to long term technology investment. IT managers are freed to be more strategic once the support desk chains are cast off.

• Better value through facing customers
  

  For many service sector businesses, there is an increasing technological dimension to the service products that firms deliver to customers and clients. Supporting sales teams by providing technical advice in the background is one aspect where an IT manager’s skills would be invaluable; or it could be a more expansive role, requiring the IT manager to be directly customer-facing as a technical salesperson.

  Take the example of an IT manager in a marketing firm. Freeing the IT manager to support clients with marketing technology such as social media channels, content management systems and enterprise marketing systems would represent much better tasking for the role. Whatever the requirement, IT managers deliver better value to the business in a role where there is more of a requirement to be customer-facing.

• Better high-level performance
  
  

  An IT manager may have ambitions to move up and take on roles such as a CIO or CTO. Career progression frequently requires knowledge gained through experience to be expanded, reinforced and embedded through academic and training activity. CPD not only equips an IT manager for the next stage of the career path, but it also uplifts the value of the role to the firm.

  This enables an IT manager to perform at a higher level, ultimately enhancing the capability of technology to better support the future success of the business.

IT managers do a better job with HTL Support

HTL Support is an IT support service provider of choice to many service sector firms, freeing IT managers to do a better job. To find out how you can get started with IT support Managed Services, simply get in touch today.

Click here to read our guide ‘IT manager: Technical support and firefighter or CIO and strategist?’.