Avoiding IT pitfalls.

• Author: Green, Robert P.
• Position: Information Technology

Unauthorized access, ineffective processing and reporting, theft, manipulation and loss. These common information technology plagues for smaller and middle-market businesses can be avoided with a well-designed and well-deployed IT strategic plan. However, before you can start work on an IT strategic plan, you need to learn from others' mistakes and consider some of the challenges to implementing IT effectively.

RELIANCE ON CUSTOM SOFTWARE AND ITS AUTHOR

Consider the following not-so-unusual case study.

Brandon, a light-manufacturing business owner, has outgrown QuickBooks. He also wants an improved website to conduct business more effectively with his customers.

Brandon feels his business is so unique that he must have custom-written software.

Without researching suitable software available in the market, and without consulting others about how to successfully engage custom software programmers, Brandon hires Joe Programmer--a one-man programming firm and friend of a tennis buddy--to write and deliver his dream software. Brandon assumes that his custom software will handle all of his business transactions.

Joe spends numerous isolated years developing, testing and installing Brandon's software and website without a plan, process map, status meeting, software development contract or documentation of a single line of code. Rather than selecting the most suitable programming language and databases, Joe uses obsolete ones with which he is familiar.

Seven years and many thousands of dollars later, Brandon still lacks his dream system. Instead, among the gems he owns, is a vulnerable, frequently hacked website from which customers buy merchandise using credit cards over a nonsecure connection. His system processes accounting information but frequently crashes, corrupting the database. He can't trust his Accounts Receivable Aging, Vendor Payable Listings or monthly P/L reports to be accurate. And his dream report, the Daily Sales Report, is unreliable.

Brandon's CPA urges him to develop an IT plan because his business suffers from unreliable accounting reports, weak information systems and, more importantly, is at risk because he has placed all of his company's data in software written and supported by one person.

Brandon replies, "I'm not making any changes--I've spent so much on Joe and his program that I can't justify any significant expenses in that area. Besides, Joe is getting belligerent with the staff around here, so I really don't want to...