What To Do When an Integral IT Manager Leaves Your Firm?
And they’re the knowledge point for their division!
Our Client
Headquartered in St. Paul, Minnesota, our client is a fast-growing distributor of electrical stimulation and other orthopedic products used for pain management, orthopedic rehabilitation, physical therapy, fitness and sport performance enhancement. They have been in business for 30 years.
Our Client’s Dilemma
The client’s data center manager had decided to leave the firm to go back to graduate school. While the client’s management wished him the best of luck, this left them in a serious bind. He was the knowledge point for that part of their organization.
Midwave’s project manager had already been working with them to resolve growing networking issues. They had acquired several new firms that all operated on their own networks and were having difficulty working together. Midwave designed and built a new IT infrastructure to bring them diverse new acquisitions under a single system.
Therefore, when the company’s Director of Information Technology found out she was losing her data center manager, she immediately called her Midwave project manager and asked what Midwave could do to help.
Midwave’s Rapid Response Solution
The project manager suggested that Midwave Shared Services would be a perfect transition for them and take away some of the pain of losing an integral employee. Midwave’s plan involved bringing in two technical resources from the client to do a knowledge transfer.
Over the next two months, a technician from the company’s data center services and one from their network side, worked with two Midwave specialists to bring them up to speed on the data manager’s expertise.
However, Midwave also introduced a new concept.. Rather than viewing this as “replacing a body with a body,” Midwave suggested this was an opportunity to optimize their environment, introduce new efficiencies to the system, and establish new best practices.
Midwave’s team broke the work involved with that department down into its component pieces and quantified each with a unique definition such as:
• this can be fixed
• this can be better
• this is something you own
• this is something you simply have to do over and over because it’s the nature of the work
Results
Midwave gave the client some breathing room so they could make the transition effectively with a minimum of noise and friction.
As they searched for a new resource to replace their manager, Midwave’s technicians helped run the data center. And Midwave continues to monitor the situation while they continue their transition.
In addition, it allowed them to introduce new best practices and new approaches to the department. It also gave them the opportunity to re-evaluate the position and reassign non-essential tasks or activities that could be better served by other individuals or departments in the firm. And lastly, it allowed them to focus on hiring the right skill set for the position.
Having Midwave on their team helped keep the situation and the company running smoothly and improved the entire IT department. This is the kind of backup and service Midwave clients have come to expect.