Managing Change in the IT Workplace

Author Robert C. Gallagher once quipped “change is inevitable-except from a vending machine.” In the IT industry, change is something we hear about every day.  It seems that the latest trend or fad is always just around the corner, ready to revolutionize our industry and turn traditional businesses upside down.

For those of us who have been in the IT industry for a significant length of time, we have learned how to weather this constant barrage of change. For every noteworthy innovation or industry transformation I can recall, there were many others that never quite materialized (neural nets and thin client computing, for example). While some of these didn’t stand the test of time; other changes have had a tremendous impact on the industry and fundamentally altered our way of life (the internet, social networking, to name a few more).

While you can’t put your business and employees in a constant state of redesign— accommodating the flavor of the month— ignoring new processes, technologies or business methods could put us in peril. Consider where your business would be without some of the latest tools and applications, or devoid of most recent sales or marketing training. A great example of this change is virtualization technologies, which are being adopted rapidly to reduce costs for clients, and enable additional support and solution revenue for channel partners. The early adopters are reaping great rewards with training, vendors and sales expertise in place. Many others are scrambling to catch up.

Gallagher also retorted that “even if you fall on your face, you’re still moving forward.” To prevent this kind of painful result from change, CompTIA provides its members with a large and varied assortment of resources to help them assess and successfully adapt their business to take advantage of industry innovation.

One recent addition to our toolkit for members is CompTIA’s Educational Videos on Demand, which covers a host of topics to help your team stay up-to-date on regulation changes, new business models, current best practices and emerging technologies. The recorded sessions are grouped into two- and three-hour series by four categories: Cloud/SaaS, IT Security, IT Services and Healthcare IT.

If you don’t have time to sit through an entire video series, consider one of our educational webinars instead. We’ve made these sessions flexible to work around your schedule. You can either register for one of our upcoming webinars or select a recorded event session from our archive. These webinars cover many of the latest and “hot” industry topics, and each provides actionable information and best practices for IT channel providers. You can check out the latest information on the data breach law, learn about using social media effectively, discover emerging trends in security threats, explore how to sell SaaS using storage, and much more…in an hour or less per session.

Keeping pace with change also means keeping up with best practices in the industry and your specific market segments, so CompTIA offers a number of resources and research to that effect. For example, you can find industry-accepted criteria on service delivery optimization or learn which practices are more lucrative for managed service providers.

 Trying to stay ahead of the curve can feel like a never-ending race. Let CompTIA – your industry association – help you win that challenge. Visit the Member Resource Center today!