Is It Time to Retire?

Brad McIntire, President of Conserv Building Services, sat in his office, wondering if it was time to retire. Once again, Technology, his nemesis, had derailed his organization and brought it to a standstill. Brad was thinking, "I think these I.T. guys are literally going to be the death of me." The issue faced by Brad and Conserv Building Services started with a bug in the mobile device management (MDM) software. The MDM software had a feature to auto-approve applications and pushed the approved applications to the tablets. For some unknown reason, the MDM software unexpectedly unapproved and uninstalled all applications on the tablets and would not let them be reinstalled on over 200 tablets. This brought the company to a standstill as this paperless software system was the only means to provide data to its customers in real-time. Conserv had built their competitive advantage in bringing this data to customers in real-time. This first instance of the glitch took down the organization for five days until it was resolved, costing the organization around one million dollars in lost revenue. The second instance of the bug resurfaced less than a month later, causing an outage for little over one day and the loss of income of around two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. These outages did not take into account the cost of resources from the I.T. department and management time dealing with the crisis. Air conditioning services are the type of thing that cannot wait, and customers demanded prompt service. Some positive signs were on the horizon. The MDM software company acknowledged that they did have a bug and would provide a fix very shortly, which encouraged the I.T. department. Brad was less confident that just because the software company agreed that there was a known issue that a resolution would be quick to follow. Brad knew that leaving an electronic system was impossible in the current environment. Customers wanted more data quicker and faster. But could the organization remove some of the reliance on Technology and software? Would the I.T. department come up with a plan that created a stable environment? Should the organization spend even more money on a new hardware platform? How much revenue would be lost with the next glitch?