The Planet Blog

If you’ve taken the time to bubble in your answers on the 10-minute IT Effectiveness survey to get a report card assessing your IT systems, you might be interested in seeing the overall results the ITEI partners culled for the 2009 Mid-Year Report. With a significant volume of small- and medium-sized business participants, some surprising trends have emerged in the midst of the unstable economic environment.

According to the results – unveiled on Tuesday – almost one in four respondents score a “D” or “F” grade while another 37 percent are barely maintaining their IT operations, scoring a “C” grade. Survey results also show that nearly half the businesses are facing obstacles in implementing new IT projects because of cuts in capital investments, and nearly one-third lack the staff to properly manage their IT investments.

In response to these findings, the ITEI partners provide a series of suggestions and best practices to advise businesses as they approach information technology decisions. A few of these key ideas are:

• Concentrate on core competencies while seeking to explore outsourcing options
• Take advantage of free software and other offerings
• Explore the cost and performance metrics of new technologies and platforms like Cloud Computing and Cloud Storage
• Consider IT infrastructure alternatives to capital expenditures through hosted hardware, software and services

In the Mid-Year Report, these suggestions are explained in detail alongside several other tips for businesses looking to streamline their IT operations and budgets.

During the year, ITEI Partners will issue periodic news as research trends emerge. If you’d like to participate in the survey and receive all of these periodic releases – including the full Mid-Year Report 2009 – visit the ITEI Web site at www.iteffectivenessindex.com.

To keep up with the latest news from the ITEI, you can follow @ITEffectiveness on Twitter for updates, tips and tricks on improving the way your company leverages IT.

-Kevin

Do you remember how you felt as the school year came to a close and summer peaked over the horizon?

For me, it was a strange combination of exhilaration, anxiousness and terror. The catalyst for those emotions was always a singular nemesis: the report card.

Being a bit of a nerd (please keep the commentary about this to a minimum, thank you), my report card was generally regarded as my life’s unequivocal barometer of success. My two or three months of summer could be made or broken by that piece of paper, and I have to admit that I didn’t always do well:

Yes, that is an A-. No, it is not a typo. An entire class boiled down into a single grade. How arbitrary and unfair can you get? … The other three grades were clearly thoughtful and accurate. What’s was the International Finance professor’s problem?!

No, I’m not actually that vain.

That’s an actual excerpt from my college transcript, and the grades weren’t arbitrary … I worked hard and prepared for class day-in and day-out, so my benchmark validated the time and effort I invested in each class … even International Finance.

It turns out grades are often directly correlated with preparation, and they can be extremely useful in personal development and business development if you ask the right questions.

Over the past few months, The Planet has been working with Microsoft, SmallBizTechnology.com, Nine Lives Media Inc., SMB Nation, Small Business Trends, HostSearch, Yankee Group and Georgia’s Kennesaw State University to put together a survey tool aimed at asking the right questions to small- and medium-sized businesses.

Welcome to the ITEI

The Information Technology Effectiveness Index (ITEI) is a survey that evaluates the effectiveness of an SMB IT infrastructure.

The vast majority of research from analyst firms focuses on large enterprise-type organizations with deep pockets and vast IT resources to support their businesses. In contrast, SMBs are largely ignored, despite the fact they drive our economy.

After taking the survey, you immediately receive your grade, along with prescriptive guidance and recommendations on how you can improve your IT effectiveness.

With questions about everything from business continuity and disaster recovery to change management and budgeting, the ITEI is has been built to provide relevant, helpful feedback and best practices to the SMB market.

As we gain critical mass, you can receive research on how they compete against others in your peer groups and in comparison with other types of SMB companies. We will run the survey throughout 2009, issuing periodic news on what we learn. In December, the partnership will issue an annual report about the state-of-the-state of IT effectiveness.

The survey is 12 questions long and only takes about 10 minutes to complete. So what are you waiting for?

Go get your ITEI grade!

-Kevin