Moving with your people

Many organizations are unsatisfied with their IT performance but simply don’t know where to begin to fix it. Luckily, the first step is simple enough: choose a better service provider.

Take Romero Kelsick, for example. He’s the ICT Manager of the Anguilla Social Security Board, a statutory body under the Government of Anguilla. And he oversees the Board’s ICT infrastructure and software acquisitions.

When Kelsick had to upgrade his organization’s corporate email service, there were two options: one was a local provider, the other was Inova Solutions. He said the two options were “like apples and oranges.”

“From the local provider, we were only getting Exchange. But Inova was offering Microsoft Office 365, so we would have Exchange, Skype for Business, SharePoint, Office Online, and we would have a whole lot of tools that are part of the Office 365 package,” he said.

“It was a no-brainer. I had a conversation with Magfried, my contact person with Inova, and the chips just fell in place.”

And there were a few “chips.” Kelsick started off by documenting the two options and making a formal recommendation to the ICT Committee, who eventually approved his proposal. That recommendation was then forwarded to the Board of Directors, and when the acquisition was eventually completed, Inova Solutions became the provider of Microsoft Office 365 to the Anguilla Social Security Board. Kelsick said it was totally worth it.

“I’m perfectly satisfied with what I’m getting. It’s exactly what I was looking for,” Kelsick said.

But that wasn’t the end of the story. Instead, for Kelsick, making that investment in upgrading his company’s use of technology was the beginning of a different kind of conversation. For the Anguilla Social Security Board, acquiring Microsoft Office 365 triggered an important discussion around the need to deploy company-wide training, in order to ensure that all members of staff understood how to use the Office 365 suite of services.

In 2014, as the Microsoft Partner of the Government of Anguilla, Inova had started rolling out Office 365 across a number of other government departments. Like many large organizations, the Anguilla government had bought Microsoft licenses in bulk and then sought to realize additional savings by collaborating on training across various departments.

“I was part of the Anguilla government’s Office 365 training,” Kelsick said, adding that the integrated approach to training yields cost savings that the Social Security Board is hoping to explore further.

“In recent times, we have been looking at it. There’s some work to be done, and discussion is taking place on a local level among IT managers like myself, other statutory bodies and the government IT folks. It’s a conversation that we’re just getting off the ground.”

And Inova Solutions is at the center of that conversation. What started as a project to simply upgrade the Board’s limited email service has expanded into an expert-led discussion about enhancing the organization’s capacity for real-time collaboration, cloud storage and document management.

“It really evolved from just being about a corporate email solution to a number of other services that we deemed beneficial to the organization,” Kelsick said.

Recognized by Microsoft in 2009 as their Licensing Solutions Provider for countries within the Caribbean, Central and South America, Inova Solutions is also a fully accredited provider of training services.

“We’re not just a licensing company,” said Faria Llanos, Training Coordinator at Inova Solutions. “We’re a full-fledged training solutions provider. Apart from Microsoft training, we offer other courses, such as Cisco, VMware, Oracle, CompTIA, and others.”

With its broad range of training offerings, Inova seeks to make sure that its clients are fully enabled to meet their customers’ needs.

“Far too often, when companies and organizations decide to deploy training of any kind, it’s usually a reactive decision, typically in response to some urgent or immediate need. They may be experiencing low performance, or they are having persistently low outcomes, or their output level is below some acceptable threshold,” Llanos said.

Part of the reason for failing to invest in training, she said, was that organizational leadership often fails to recognize the inherent value of investing in human resource development.

“There is sometimes an attitude that says, ‘What if we invest in our people and they leave?’ Of course, the more important question is ‘What if we don’t invest in our people and they stay?’ If you think it’s expensive to work with a professional, wait until you hire an amateur!”

The bottom line is: if you want to move forward with your organization, move forward with your people,” Llanos said.

There is an investment to be made in order to develop your IT staff, but failing to make that investment could cost your organization even more.

“At the executive level of your organization, your strategic thinking must include overall staff development. Your investment in IT hardware and services is too significant to leave the Human Resource component to chance,” said Hans Kruithof, Managing Director of Inova Solutions.

“That’s why so many  successful organizations look for a quality end-user training services provider, like Inova Solutions. Enhancing human resource development is a major key to getting the most out of your IT investment.”