excellent points
This article is great for outsourced IT deptments, commonly called consultants. My company looks at its processes and is very transparent to its clients. We know they can easily take their business elsewhere and strive to bring quick, quality, trained technicians to solve their pains. We do not have the luxery of a salary job, where it doesnt matter if our "clients" like us or not, we are just going to keep going to work because it is what we are paid to do. I have worked in IT departments, I was IT manager and Director of IT at the company before I started my own. The benefits of benchmarking help you show a need for raises for you guys when you are meeting and surpassing the users expectations. Also, when IT is going well, we are hidden, and not needed, and benchmarking can show why IT is still needed. A paradigm shift needs to occur and get the idea that IT and the rest of the company are seperate to go away. More IT people need to spend the time out of IT and in other parts of the company to have a fuller understanding of what the clients needs are, and they will see why benchmarking is important. If nothing else, with proper benchmarking, upper management will know who to get rid of when the marks are not met...perhaps this is what most IT departments are scared of.
