Information technology is changing the way business operates and increasing the need for consistent computer usage, security, and clear policies. Establishing policies and procedures for Information Technology (IT) management issues like:

• Information security;
• Computer usage;
• Network management; and
• IT policy

is now easier than ever using MS-Word templates available in the Computer and Network Policies, Procedures and Forms manual.  The IT manual enables business owners, IT managers, and IT departments to use customizable prewritten documents to protect and control their IT assets.

Easy IT Standards Compliance

Today’s business owners, Chief Information Officers (CIO), Chief Operating Officers (COO) and business leaders are required to comply with various federal regulations and international IT standards (e.g., Sarbanes-Oxley, COBIT, ITIL, ISO 27000, ISO 20000). To meet these regulations, companies must demonstrate adequate internal controls of business records, information security, and quality management through effective use of policies and procedures and/or associated document compliance management software.

Computers and IT are important parts of business operations, routinely storing and circulating volumes of information between various business processes.  Many business functions necessitate the use of computer systems and networks. Since businesses and computer systems are increasingly interconnected, the need for controls such as IT policy, information security and computer usage guidelines become equally important.

The “Computer & Network Policies, Procedures, and Forms” manual addresses critical IT management issues and is an invaluable resource for any IT manager or IT department.  It complements our highly successful Accounting Policies, Procedures, and Forms Manual and, when combined, both publications provide a complete compliance solution.

Facilitate IT Management

The Computer & Network (or the IT) Manual provides a framework upon which a company of any size can improve the capabilities of their current IT system, systematically forecast IT needs and budgets, facilitate IT asset management, and resolve IT security issues.

By addressing core IT management issues, this manual helps many small and medium size companies that don’t have an experienced CIO leading the way to formulate best practices and optimal standards to establish a formal IT policy. This is the first publication to identify and provide the guidance and the tools for business leaders to accurately and efficiently determine the hardware, software, training, and security requirements of the organization.

Easy MS-Word Customization

The Computer and Network Policies, Procedures, and Forms Manual discusses strategic IT management issues including IT security, control of computer and network assets, and includes a section on creating your own information systems manual along with a computer and IT security policy guide.  Since all this content is available in editable MS-Word files, you can easily edit and customize the manual to create your own IT policy and corresponding procedures.  View a free sample from the manual today.

We received an inquiry recently on our process implementation page, where we ask: ‘How do you train and communicate with your team?’ A reader from a large school district wrote in using one of our new ‘Talkback‘ links saying that their district is in the midst of many changes. The district faces many communications and training challenges, especially when introducing new information technology for employees. The reader went on to ask, ‘How do large companies communicate and prepare training for organizational change or implementation?’

Will Employees Skip Training When A Customer Calls?

Though a school district may be an extreme example, it shares practical challenges similar to many geographically dispersed organizations where employees work independently. Teachers may work at dozens of locations. Culturally, teachers work independently most of the time and are highly self-directed. Every teacher answers to many customers–classroom parents–to whom they must be responsive. Daily schedules are rigid, driven by the defined length and periods of the school day. Non-class in-service training and meeting time is scheduled long in advance.

Any organization with a distributed workforce that works directly with customers faces similar training challenges. Does your workforce travel? Do your employees manage customer relationships in the field? Would your field employees skip training if a customer calls? Think: field sales, field service, field engineering, route delivery. For many such organizations, in-person group training is probably not practical.

 If training Is Not Practical, What Do You Do?

But training is still essential. For example, your route sales and delivery professionals across the Americas require training on a new ordering system. As in the case of teachers in a school district, their workdays are prescribed by customer’s strict time constraints. Any time available for training needs to be measured in tens of minutes. Further complicating matters, every employee’s availability is different.  And by the nature of their work and work culture, they operate independently.

Clearly, building a training program based on inflexible, one-size-fits all classroom training isn’t going work. But self-paced user-driven independently administered training would work. So video content was developed in three to 10-minute bites that employees could access at any time. The information was organized so that students could approach the training either sequentially, or as needed during the day.  Materials and delivery were customized to work with the limited mobile bandwidth and small screens employees had.

A technology partner configured an on-line “campus” web site, complete with quizzes and completion-tracking built in so that the corporation knew who had been exposed to the material, and had demonstrated proficiency. Compliance metrics helped the company roll-out new features and capabilities at times when metrics indicted likely acceptance by workers.

Do You Have a Distributed Training Challenge?

If your corporation, school district or other organization employs independent workers and you are budgeting for a training solution, contact Bizmanualz for a demonstration. While the content can be custom-developed for your organization, you will benefit by sharing the on-line infrastructure, which today is hosting proprietary video training for several large, distributed organizations.

With an understanding of your needs, your content can be developed and hosted in an on-line campus customized for you. Just as Bizmanualz has the largest library of pre-written policies and procedures, we can provide an existing on-line campus so that you don’t have to re-create the wheel.

Call us at (314) 863-5079 x18, e-mail Sales@bizmanualz.com or use the ‘Talkback’ dialog on our Training and Roll-Out page.

Sitting here at Soulard Barber Shop Saturday morning, I am reflecting on the IT Innovation Conference I attended last week in St. Louis. First of all, it was satisfying to see more than 500 IT professionals, infrastructure managers, staffing providers, storage, and computing vendors and CIOs gathered at a regional conference amidst the poor economic news of our time.  But it made sense, in light of the “glimmer of a turnaround” described in the closing keynote by CIO magazine publisher emeritus Gary Beach. Perhaps those who showed up had sensed the same. It was reassuring.

But even more reassuring was the talk of planned projects and ongoing implementations. One company was bringing a supplier management program on line. Another was doubling data center capacity to support an anticipated spike in consumer demand. Yet another was implementing an electronic records conversion across dozens of hospitals. (Check out the meeting agenda.) What was reassuring was not only the volume of activity presented in sessions and discussed in the hallways, but also the realization—in demonstrable, robust terms—to what exactly is required for success: great communications.

More so than in years past, project managers showed how they involved users from the very beginning, long before requirements were set or vendors were selected. They described involving users in large collaborative sessions to define requirements and evaluate vendors against requirements.  One healthcare company went so far as to invite three vendors in for a long weekend of product demonstrations and working sessions, and hundreds of professional employees showed up voluntarily on their weekend to participate!

Nobody wants to feel like an IT implementation was done to them. Users need to feel buy-in, like they helped design the solution. If they designed it, they will use it, and you will get a return on your IT investment, now, and throughout the system’s life. Since every system falls short in some ways, users must be committed to helping you improve the system. That implies that you, the project champion, have a communications plan. And that plan has to foster three-point communication:

• You gather input, often from users.
• You reflect back what you heard in some demonstrable way, such as in a beta test or feature set.
• Your user acknowledges—ultimately through increased usage—that you heard them and acted appropriately.

No matter how great your technology, communications must be robust. Prior to launch, gather input. Reflect what you heard with written requirements. Involve users in source selection and beta demonstrations. Build in channels for active and frequent user response. If users are not coming to you, go to them. That’s what so many of this year’s conference presenters demonstrated.

Read about next year’s IT conference in Saint Louis.