Why You Need IT Support

You come into work one Monday morning to find that your toilets are completely out of action and a very unpleasant smell is filling the building. One of your colleagues has found a large plunger and is approaching the toilets with an expression of grim determination. Clients are starting to arrive. You've got to find a plumber but no one can find an up-to-date copy of the Yellow Pages.

What Do You Do?

You come into work on Monday morning to find that your network server is completely dead. No one can get at word processing files or the client record system that is absolutely central to the work of your organization. A colleague is sitting at the file server feverishly trying to contact the friendly management committee member who helps with the computers. The waiting room is starting to fill up and no one can find that copy of the Yellow Pages.

What Do You Do?

Yellow pages might just provide a solution as far as a plumber is concerned, but any agency that depends on IT to deliver good quality services has got to have proper arrangements for IT support. You have to be sure you've got someone to turn to when things go wrong

It would be nice if you had someone on your staff who could deal with every problem, but even the biggest companies find it hard to cope with everything in-house. IT is just too specialized and problems are too episodic to sustain in-house staff with adequate skills. It is far more cost-effective to contract specialist help to be available when you need it.

Reliable support isn't cheap or easy to find, so what can you expect and how can you make the best use of it? We talked to a number of people who provide IT support to get their views on what works best for voluntary organisations.

Andy Gibb ran East London-based Type Help for 13 years, providing IT support focused specifically on voluntary organisations.

Gibb was very clear on the three main requirements for effective computer systems.

• Systems must be set up systematically.
• Organizations must manage and provide effective administration for the systems.
• External support must be technically competent and available.

Systematic set-up might sound obvious, but Andy was quite clear that this is the essential foundation of reliable systems. This means taking the time to think through what you want, having it set up systematically and professionally, and then leaving it alone. Too often nonprofit organizations set systems incrementally and then continue to tinker with them. This may be because time isn't made to sit down and plan, or because technical enthusiasts enjoy fiddling, but it isn't a recipe for reliable systems.

Gibb's second point is interesting because he places responsibility for good support on sound administration within the agency. This includes very basic things like good record keeping: maintaining an inventory of all equipment, knowing where the original disks and manuals are kept, and keeping a log of all problems.

Central to this is the link person or IT coordinator who acts as the main point of contact between the organization and the support company. Having someone clearly defined in this role makes everyone's life easier. He or she can build up a relationship with the support company, and act as an intermediary between technicians and members of staff. The link person also acts as a filter, keeping a log of problems, dealing with more minor problems, and only calling on external support where necessary.

Gibb didn't see this as a very technical role, and has found that "home-grown" nonprofit staff do it better than many technical people who often aren't good at record keeping.

He also emphasized the importance of the training element of the role. Many of the problems people have with their computers are connected with a lack of training, and an IT coordinator who can provide support and training when it is needed can be very effective in reducing problems.

Gibb also highlighted the different types of support that are available. It would be nice to be able to get all support from a single source, but in fact support comes in three flavors. First there is basic hardware support -- the familiar maintenance contract on your computer or printer. Second, comes systems support -- most typically support for network server and operating systems and cabling. Finally there is application support -- providing help with application software like Microsoft Office or a specialist application like an accounts package or database.

Type Help increasingly tried to combine hardware and systems support, looking after an organization's network and all its PCs. This worked well because it ended up with complete responsibility for the system, and it also meant that it could supply new or replacement PCs. However, they didn't do applications support. This is usually provided by the software supplier, like Microsoft, or the specialist accounts or database supplier.

Philip Anthony of Cooperative Systems echoes many of Andy's views. Co-op Systems has been providing IT support to London's not-for-profit sector since 1987 and is now the largest provider of IT support aimed at the sector. Anthony also emphasises the importance of a link person because it makes things so much easier for the support company. He points out that from their point of view, some small voluntary organizations can be quite difficult to support. They have high expectations but few resources and so expect a lot from their support company. They don't devote enough of their own resources to IT, and often don't allocate a main point of contact for IT problems -- which can lead to frustration all round.

Successful support companies are much in demand and are beginning to choose who they want to work with and are tempted to walk away from organizations that are just limping along in favor of their more professional colleagues.

In Anthony's view there is a cultural problem in some nonprofit organizations that still refuse to recognize the importance of IT. For example, an organization with a ten-workstation network and an annual budget of close to a million dollars baulked at spending $2,500 on network support. Even though it depends heavily on the network and $2,500 is a small percentage of its budget, much less than it spends on its photocopier, the organizations still thinks it's too much.

Paul Ticher is a consultant rather than an IT support company, but his experience bears out the views above. He worked with a national organization that was installing computer systems in its offices around the country. Some of the computers were professionally set-up at the head office and then distributed around the country. Others were distributed first, with staff at each office handling its own set-up. Guess which ones had subsequent problems? The ones which staff set-up themselves weren't done so systematically, caused more problems, and were harder to support.

Another issue that became apparent was the need for the link person. It was easier to help those offices that had allocated responsibility for the computer system, but where responsibility was divided or unclear, it was harder to sort out their problems.

Ticher also has thoughts on dealing with the tendency of IT staff within an agency to constantly fiddle with systems. He feels that this is very much a management issue for the agency, and that IT staff shouldn't be left to change systems as they see fit, but should only do so with clear authorization on the basis of discussion on how the agency's needs can best be met. Support staff need clear job descriptions; there's no place for mavericks.

So What's the Conclusion?

• Good support depends as much on you as it does on your support company.
• Most of what you require in-house isn't very technical but is based on good administration.
• If you can find a good support company, take care to maintain a good relationship -- a link person is essential.
• You'll have to pay for good quality support -- but of course the Yellow Pages always comes free.