One challenge that organizations face today is how to coordinate their staff with information technology (IT) to respond to priorities. Companies often abandon a consistent approach even after they establish a clear organizational technical profile. Such an approach can be affected by and even replaced by fiefdoms, acquisitions, mergers, software vendors, hardware vendors, and the IT department's need to acquire technology for reasons no one else in the organization can understand. The impact of this activity hampers productivity primarily because the staff that is expected to use the technology is constantly adjusting to unexpected change, which can destroy the ability to execute plans in a timely fashion.

Communication and cooperation aren't always seen as advantages when the pressure of deadlines and decreasing sales are a daily occurrence. Communication and cooperation do allow, however, critical decisions to be made before a company engages in any enterprise-wide application. Allowing vendors to present their products and services to all directors or department heads in an organization is one way to foster cooperation. Such an approach eliminates communication breakdown and alienation. Final selection should be made after reviewing critiques submitted by all the directors. The IT department's position should be to support the software selected regardless of the technology.

Such a decision allows IT to present a resource that best addresses the needs not only of staff but also of clients. At Spencer Reed, for example, clients who use the Internet can access our system to review job orders and to approve timesheets
submitted by our consultants. Faxed timesheets can be digitized and imported into the system. From that point, Internet and faxed timesheets are processed by the payroll and accounting systems. Needs were recognized before the technology was selected.

Priorities will not be addressed if the technology is not used productively. There may be two reasons for lack of productivity:

1. Technology users don't always want to be trained when new software is introduced. Some users may consider themselves beyond needing to be taught because of their "expertise" in using systems that they know. These users don't have time and don't want to spend any part of their budget to learn something that they can teach themselves.

At the opposite end are users who want to avoid the system at all costs because of "system problems" and an attitude of "we can do it better without a computer." Neither category of user is responding to the organization's priorities because they will not qualify themselves to be productive based on the organization's standards. When the help-desk logs are examined, these users usually require more than their share of support.

2. Usage is not being monitored. Some organizations believe that their users will surf the Internet, play games, and send personal e-mail, so they respond by limiting computer usage. The proper response is to monitor usage via reports, restrict access to nonessential sites, and to enforce an organizational e-mail policy. Technology must be recognized as essential to productivity.

In 2001, users have to contend with technology problems more than they would like. Viruses, virus scares, lack of access to networks because DSL providers go out of business without notice, and rolling blackouts all contribute to the notion that technology should be viewed as an obstacle. Too much time is spent getting technology to work. Everything is brought into proper prospective when usage is monitored and the associated results are identified.

Companies that coordinate staff with IT to respond to priorities will organize themselves to be efficient in all economic climates. The ability to meet priorities depends on training staff, employing a consistent approach in selecting technology, monitoring usage of that technology, and planning the next technology step.