Habit 1: Treat some IT as a commodityWhilst all decisions need care, some need more care than others. Spending a few hundred pounds on a printer does not warrant the same time as re-networking the office. Not all IT decisions or implementations require projects or cost/benefit analyses. Part of the skill of getting the most from IT is deciding which activities need management attention, and which do not. Some businesses use ?IT principles?. These are ground-rules, which are not up for discussion. For example, a business might decide to standardise on Microsoft Office as an IT principle. This removes one or more variables from the process, simplifying the decision. As with all principles they are subject to periodic review. The cost of small in-house IT teams is committed and not discretionary. Businesses therefore invest in prioritising their work rather than individually justifying each project. The fewer the people involved in making a decision, the less formality is needed. However, many of the principles outlined here apply regardless of the size of a business. That is especially true for start-ups planning for fast growth. Businesses purchasing commodities seek long term value from their supplier and, when the specification is standard and known, they use price and quality as the selection criteria.
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