My Own Worst Enemy...
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@NetworkNerd said:
@JaredBusch said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Yeah, that's the big problem. Why would the financial head get financial advice from IT? Something is very wrong. You are functioning as a senior financial person to the head of finance!!
This is a point I have disagreed with you on before. He is not getting financial advice. He is getting technical advice. The CFO should not be expected to deal with the details of the hardware and determining all the IT costs involved in choosing a lease with maintenance over something without. Only a person with IT skills can know how much IT time will be spent for comparison purposes.
That is IT's role in decisions like this. Once these facts are known, they are presented to the CFO to make the business decision.
You always mix too much big business/enterprise concepts into the SMB space. No matter how "things should be," things are much different between the two.
And we (IT) are asked to approve the bills for IT services, which would include said lease agreement. I can see why the CFO would want my input in this case.
Input, sure. IT has good reason to put eyes on the subject. But who did the CFO want to run the numbers and determine if it made financial sense?
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@scottalanmiller said:
If he is asking about if leasing makes financial sense, that's not technical. That's purely understanding opex, capex, ROI, TCO, etc. No technical there at all.
And how do you get ROI, TCO, etc. without having IT participate? You do not.
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@JaredBusch said:
@scottalanmiller said:
If he is asking about if leasing makes financial sense, that's not technical. That's purely understanding opex, capex, ROI, TCO, etc. No technical there at all.
And how do you get ROI, TCO, etc. without having IT participate? You do not.
For a printer, you probably get no financial input from IT. But you certainly can never get that solely from IT. That's a financial decision that might value some amount of IT input. It is never an IT decision alone. It can be financial alone or financial and IT together.
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If you were left out of the loop, it isn't your fault. Could you have prevented some higher costs from being an issue? Yes, but ONLY if you knew. If you didn't know, it's nothing you should blame yourself for
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I really think you need to move on to CYOA on this one, now that the CFO has the impression that you approved everything, your ass very well could be on the line, even though it had nothing to do with you. If I were you, I'd set the record straight ASAP.
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@Dominica said:
I really think you need to move on to CYOA on this one, now that the CFO has the impression that you approved everything, your ass very well could be on the line, even though it had nothing to do with you. If I were you, I'd set the record straight ASAP.
Definitely do this.
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@Dominica said:
I really think you need to move on to CYOA on this one, now that the CFO has the impression that you approved everything, your ass very well could be on the line, even though it had nothing to do with you. If I were you, I'd set the record straight ASAP.
Ok, I just did that. I just let the CFO know the conversation happened after the lease was signed and really all I could do was verify the machine would seemingly do the job from a technical standpoint since IT had previously been left out of the process.
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@NetworkNerd said:
@Dominica said:
I really think you need to move on to CYOA on this one, now that the CFO has the impression that you approved everything, your ass very well could be on the line, even though it had nothing to do with you. If I were you, I'd set the record straight ASAP.
Ok, I just did that. I just let the CFO know the conversation happened after the lease was signed and really all I could do was verify the machine would seemingly do the job from a technical standpoint since IT had previously been left out of the process.
As long as you're covered there, you're fine.
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@JaredBusch said:
You always mix too much big business/enterprise concepts into the SMB space. No matter how "things should be," things are much different between the two.
Agree with this. It's a bit like you wouldn't expect the violinist in an orchestra to have any input on the trombonist, but a bass player in a rock band could have input on the drummer.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@JaredBusch said:
You always mix too much big business/enterprise concepts into the SMB space. No matter how "things should be," things are much different between the two.
Agree with this. It's a bit like you wouldn't expect the violinist in an orchestra to have any input on the trombonist, but a bass player in a rock band could have input on the drummer.
I'm not talking about having input, I'm talking about playing the trombone on his behalf while he watches. Did the CFO have any financial input? It appears that @NetworkNerd was asked to over see all of the financial portions. Maybe I am misreading it, but that is what it sounded like. That the finance department turned over all aspects of finance, even those parts that IT can not know (like the need for capex versus opex) to the IT department.
That is nothing like "getting input" from a concerned department.
