Running Quickbooks is like....
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In my thinking the scenario is:
You just need paper to write on. You can either use the paper you get at Staples that many other people use and is fine, or the special paper that your paper manufacturer is recommending.
Apparently the "better" paper lasts longer, doesn't tear as easily, but you've been in business for 20 years using regular paper, so you think you'll be OK.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@art_of_shred said:
@scottalanmiller said:
There really is no IT without business (e.g. owner) perspective. The two are one and the same.
Strongly disagree.
In what way? How does IT do anything without the context of business? I don't even know what that would mean. There is business without IT, of course. But IT is an aspect of business. Outside of a business context, there is nothing like IT.
What you are in essence saying is that IT is as important to the owner as the business is to IT. It may be true on paper, within a certain frame of reference, but I have hardly ever experienced a situation where the owner treated IT as something of influence. To the average business owner, IT is a necessary evil (complete overhead). The fact that you assess it completely from the other side shows a "how it looks from the IT side" perspective.
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@BRRABill said:
Apparently the "better" paper lasts longer, doesn't tear as easily, but you've been in business for 20 years using regular paper, so you think you'll be OK.
That's fine, I agree. I'm not saying that there aren't reasons why businesses make bad decisions. They don't know any better, they don't take the time to reconsider buying decisions even at the time of buying, they lack the advisement, they don't have a good understanding of risk, they feel that they are too busy to address decision making, accident, etc.
But it is super critical that we understand the difference between knowing when a bad or potentially bad decision is made and when we are excusing bad decision making and when we are excusing bad decisions. No matter how much it makes sense that someone makes a bad decision does not mean that the decision is good, only that there is excuse for it (good or bad.)
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@art_of_shred said:
What you are in essence saying is that IT is as important to the owner as the business is to IT.
Not at all, I'm saying that IT is an artefact of business and there is no IT without business. There cannot conceptually be an "IT decision that doesn't account for the business needs" - because the one and only context for IT decisions is the business.
The idea of "IT in a vacuum ignoring business needs", I am arguing, isn't IT at all. But rather just some other thing like "computer operations." IT, by definition, is a business function, IMHO. That's one of the reasons why things like Geek Squad are not IT - they have no business context, they work on computers for computers' sake. But in IT we work on computers for the business' sake.
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@art_of_shred said:
The fact that you assess it completely from the other side shows a "how it looks from the IT side" perspective.
What IT perspective am I bringing at all? It's purely a business discussion. It's only because we are talking about an application that the aspect of the business happens to be IT. But the ideas of functionality, risk, cost, profit, efficiency are purely business ones and not IT ones.
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@art_of_shred said:
@scottalanmiller said:
at the end of the day we have only a single job: to do this better than a business could do without us (hopefully by a margin large enough to justify our cost.)This is easy to agree with, but then I think that we're using a poor example to prop this up. If IT's job is to save the business money and make things run more efficiently, why not talk about actual IT concerns, like servers, switches, virtualization, VDI, etc.? Why QuickBooks? Should the decision of what accounting program to use be an IT-based decision? It might be, but I doubt many business owners would see it that way.
My boss certainly does not. I was kept at arm length when it came to our new EHR.
Software, the departments who want new software don't care about IT's thoughts... But the hardware that runs it... They probably care less about that.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@art_of_shred said:
The fact that you assess it completely from the other side shows a "how it looks from the IT side" perspective.
What IT perspective am I bringing at all? It's purely a business discussion. It's only because we are talking about an application that the aspect of the business happens to be IT. But the ideas of functionality, risk, cost, profit, efficiency are purely business ones and not IT ones.
But you just got done saying that they are one and the same...
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And I feel as IT we might even be biased.
Sure PRODUCT XYZ sucks. But does it really? It anyone else really looking at it the way we do?
I am sure millions of people have used QB with no data problems, and it's done their invoices, and they are very happy, and it's didn't cost their business. So is it really that bad? I mean, if it electrocuted everyone who used it, and the incidence that was once every week, sure, it's terrible.
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@BRRABill IT??? Biased??? No way!!!
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@art_of_shred said:
@BRRABill IT??? Biased??? No way!!!
But that's my point. We can't even decide on a TV brand here. LOL.
For everyone who says Sharp is the best, people chime in and say they blow.
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@art_of_shred said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@art_of_shred said:
The fact that you assess it completely from the other side shows a "how it looks from the IT side" perspective.
What IT perspective am I bringing at all? It's purely a business discussion. It's only because we are talking about an application that the aspect of the business happens to be IT. But the ideas of functionality, risk, cost, profit, efficiency are purely business ones and not IT ones.
But you just got done saying that they are one and the same...
IT is part of the business. It is not something on its own. The owner might not want to listen or take advice or whatever, but he's just becoming IT at that point. He can't "do without technology" but if he uses technology for business, someone is handling the IT. It's not that IT isn't making decisions, it's that someone else might be performing the role of IT rather than who we were expecting (or hoping.)
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@BRRABill said:
@art_of_shred said:
@BRRABill IT??? Biased??? No way!!!
But that's my point. We can't even decide on a TV brand here. LOL.
For everyone who says Sharp is the best, people chime in and say they blow.
Ask three IT people a question and you get 10 answers.
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@art_of_shred said:
@scottalanmiller said:
There really is no IT without business (e.g. owner) perspective. The two are one and the same.
Strongly disagree.
Actually I do agree with him. Because either the owner is making the decisions or IT is... Rarely both. In SMB more often owner...
But rarely do either actually take the time to find the right product for the best solution.
In most cases they are picking from things they have heard about. And QB does a ton of advertising.
If Zero and others advertised, they would probably be picked up more.
Just like my office.... They don't think IT belongs in the decision making process so we don't even hear about it until it is purchased.
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@BRRABill said:
And I feel as IT we might even be biased.
Sure PRODUCT XYZ sucks. But does it really? It anyone else really looking at it the way we do?
In the successfully enterprise space, yes, absolutely. This is how the business works.
Only in the SMB do you find any real incidence of business owners who actively don't think about their own business and how to assist it as much as the IT department typically does.
But everything we are talking about here is basic business, not really IT. Yes, it is a computer application so it is IT, too. But every issue we are discussing is about the business needs, business factors and why it is bad for the business.
QuickBooks is good for IT, it creates jobs and makes us far more necessary. If we look at this purely from an IT benefits standpoint, bring on the QB. It pays the bills.
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@Dashrender said:
Just like my office.... They don't think IT belongs in the decision making process so we don't even hear about it until it is purchased.
Which, for the most part, just ends up turning them into IT.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@art_of_shred said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@art_of_shred said:
The fact that you assess it completely from the other side shows a "how it looks from the IT side" perspective.
What IT perspective am I bringing at all? It's purely a business discussion. It's only because we are talking about an application that the aspect of the business happens to be IT. But the ideas of functionality, risk, cost, profit, efficiency are purely business ones and not IT ones.
But you just got done saying that they are one and the same...
IT is part of the business. It is not something on its own. The owner might not want to listen or take advice or whatever, but he's just becoming IT at that point. He can't "do without technology" but if he uses technology for business, someone is handling the IT. It's not that IT isn't making decisions, it's that someone else might be performing the role of IT rather than who we were expecting (or hoping.)
Well, now you really have a pitching deck if we just assign "roles" to random people who do things related to a function. So if IT is not being done by the IT people and anyone can put the IT hat on for a moment when a decision is made, then it's all relative, and I have no idea what we're talking about at all. And you still keep avoiding that one basic point, that a bad decision doesn't cause instant death. I don't think anyone is arguing that bad decisions should be avoided. We should probably start a thread about how important it is to not eat silica gel packets when opening packages.
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@art_of_shred said:
Well, now you really have a pitching deck if we just assign "roles" to random people who do things related to a function.
Well if there is food and it has been cooked, the person who cooked it is the cook. The person who works works on the car is the mechanic. The person who sweeps up is the janitor. Even if it is the CEO doing those things, they are still acting as the janitor.
If we base it by title and not task, then we have anarchy.
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@art_of_shred said:
And you still keep avoiding that one basic point, that a bad decision doesn't cause instant death.
I'm avoiding it because I didn't realize that it was a point and have no idea what it has to do with the discussion. Why does it matter than a bad decision doesn't cause instant death? Isn't good decision making and business improvement good for their own sakes? Does something have to cause instant death to be worthy of avoiding?
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@art_of_shred said:
We should probably start a thread about how important it is to not eat silica gel packets when opening packages.
are you suggesting that Intuit's customers are in a high risk pool for eating those?
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@scottalanmiller said:
Can't always change things. The important thing, IMHO, is making sure that they understand that IT does not approve and that we see it as them not taking their business seriously. It's one thing to support what we are told to support, it is another to empower bad decision making by making it "seem acceptable."
This is where the "OMG we're all gonna die if we use QB" started to creep in. Before this post, I agreed with your point about not condoning bad decisions. At this point is where it began to turn and just become silly.
