Hand In Hand
Ironically, technology is the key to setting tech spending.
When it comes to prioritizing your IT spending, don’t underestimate the power of technology to help determine your company’s needs. At Dallas-based BH Management Services, executives use Client Centric Solution’s ClientConnect online collaboration tool to discuss and set priorities for various IT projects.
“It allows us to track projects we’re looking at and encourages and fosters communications,” says D. Thomas Figert, BH Management’s director of information technology. “It’s proved to be of significant benefit to us.”
For instance, using the Web-based collaboration software’s workspace feature, users can post comments or updates on a project. If a consultant’s evaluation of a given technology has been delivered to the company, it can be added to the online dialogue.
“It very much takes on the persona of a blog,” Figert says. “It gives you a repository for all the meaningful literature and information associated with a project, and you can add it right there in the form of attachments.”
For projects that are already in the works, ClientConnect’s messaging system allows all participants to see progress as it happens, while prompting them to complete their own tasks and keep things rolling.
“Whenever there’s an update, or something has been added to a given project’s workspace, everyone involved receives a trigger,” Figert says. “It has really allowed us to organize and work our way through the process of the project development life cycle.”
