I often meet with prospective Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers who have internal IT staff. Usually it's just one person and that person came to the organization to do a different job and then morphed into the IT support person by virtue of their interest in computers. By the time I meet them, considerable time has passed since this arrangement got formalized and the business owner is wondering whether or not his internal person knows as much as everyone once believed. In truth, the wondering stopped a long time ago, probably when the owner heard a peer talking about a computer network capability that she uses routinely. The owner inquires about the mountains of time and money it must have taken to get that capability only to be told by nearly everyone else that the capability is commonplace in today's computer services.

When the owner got back to the office and asked his tech support person about it, he again hears how he's better off forgetting about that capability because it will take lots of time and money to implement it and then it won't work like he expects. That's when I get a call to discuss matters. Sure enough, the conversation gets around to that specific capability and, after I assure the owner that it is very possible, he screams, "I knew it!"

The next part of the conversation is difficult. I have to gently remind this prospective IT support services customer that he created the situation he's in by giving his network to a person who is unqualified to perform the job. I try to sugarcoat it with a monologue on the rapid rate at which technology changes and the great difficulty any one person must have trying to keep up with new features. And that's true. Not one of my computer systems consultants will pretend to know everything necessary to keep any but the smallest of computer networks running at peak efficiency. We rely on one another to make sure that happens. What the inside network support person has done is to limit the changes in the network so that he can continue to use the knowledge he gained in putting the network together for as long as possible.

That approach stiffles creativity. It throws water on any new idea for moving the business forward thru technology. It's a cost that doesn't get weighed when small business owners consider their computer network services options. You see, while most of my customers are in a relatively steady state with respect to their network, many of them are going thru a significant change. Because of this, it is rare that any one of our customers has to suffer thru being the first to have a particular new technical capability installed in their office. Where the inside guy gets only one chance to get it right, and fears the pressure involved, our network technicians get to do it all the time, and look forward to finding ways to do it better the next time.