Community IT Innovators Nonprofit Technology Topics

What is an IT Business Manager? with Jennifer Huftalen

• Community IT Innovators • Season 7 • Episode 5

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Director of Client Services Jennifer Huftalen answers questions about the IT Business Manager role at Community IT. How is an IT Business Manager different from a vCIO or an account manager? Learn more from this conversation.


The takeaways: 

  • The IT Business Manager is a unique role in the sector and at MSPs serving nonprofits. A combination of technology expertise and a business background make Community IT’s IT Business Managers ideally suited to help our clients undertake strategic planning and management of their IT. 
  • Similar to a vCIO, like an account manager but so much more, the IT Business Managers work with the primary contact to manage and understand the costs and strategies of IT investment in addition to supporting the help desk team provide day-to-day support. 
  • The IT Business Manager comes in at onboarding and helps analyze the initial assessment. IT Business Managers at Community IT can spot trends, identify duplicate tools, extra licenses, help the client create an accurate inventory of devices and licenses, and basically work in manageable stages to move the nonprofits’ IT to a “steady state” of well-managed IT.
  • Community IT considers our clients our partners in managing IT. Nonprofits know what their ideal IT would look like. We find that a part time vCIO who parachutes in monthly or quarterly can’t develop the deep understanding of that client’s needs and pain points and help them invest wisely and manage change. The IT Business Manager at Community IT monitors trends in help desk tickets and identifies ways technology can make the nonprofit more efficient and secure. And the IT Business Manager documents everything, so you can ask any questions and understand how your processes work and what IT you are using. 
  • The IT Business Manager has a long term relationship with your organization and can develop 3-5 year planning in conjunction with your executive team that can be used for grant applications and funding support. For just one example, check out our case study on how an adult charter school in DC was able to implement a 4 year plan in 3 months to move all their students to remote learning in 2020.
  • Using Community IT and having access to an IT Business Manager solves the nonprofit problem of trying to hire for this leadership position and find people with a technical AND business background and be able to retain these unique people. And the IT Business Manager at Community IT has the entire team as a resource and their experience at other clients, so you get the benefit of that network of information and expertise.

Navigating the complexities of IT management doesn’t have to be a solo journey for nonprofit leaders. By bridging the gap between high-level strategy and daily operations, the IT Business Manager ensures your technology is an asset rather than a cost. At Community IT, we believe the strongest solutions come from this kind of deep, human-centered partnership. To learn more about how our unique approach to IT management supports long-term mission success, we invite you to listen to our podcast episode or reach out to start a conversation today.

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Carolyn Woodard:

So do you feel ready to go?

Jenny Huftalen:

I think so. I mean, yeah, we'll make it up as we go along here.

Carolyn Woodard:

Welcome everyone to the Community IT Innovators Technology Topics podcast. My name is Carolyn Woodard, your host. And today I am happy to be talking to my friend and colleague, Jenny Huftalan, who is our client services director. So, Jenny, do you want to introduce yourself?

Jenny Huftalen:

Yes. Hi, thanks, Carolyn. Yep, I'm Jenny Huftalin, the Director of Client Services at Community IT. And yeah, really happy to be connecting with you today and talking about what I think is one of the more special components to our approach to manage services, our IT business management team.

Carolyn Woodard:

Exactly. So that's why I wanted to talk to you today is we have this position, this role that we have that nobody else has. And we named it, nobody knows what the name is. So the IT business manager. Can you talk a little bit about what do they do? What are they?

Jenny Huftalen:

Yeah, what don't they do really is a better question. Yeah, it is a unique role, I think. I think it's probably industry-wide most commonly aligned with a V CIO or a virtual CIO, which you may hear of more regularly out in the sort of MSP landscape. But it's really a lot more, I think, you know, VCI role role you think of as being somebody who comes in at a very high level, often for a short period of time, to identify big, big problems, tell you what to do about those problems, and then, you know, give you some recommendations and you go from there.

Jenny Huftalen:

Whereas an IT business manager and the business part of it is an in is intentional, they and management part of it because they're really coming in to get in the trenches with our partners to understand their operations, everything from those high-level problems down to kind of some of the day-to-days that may really impact how people work, you know, what factors sort of influence decision making, they really get in the weeds and and it has a huge impact on not only our relationships with our partners, they obviously are very skilled technicians themselves and they have a background in IT, but they're really people people, you know, and they develop those critical relationships with our partners to understand, you know, big factors that motivate decision making, budgetary issues or constraints, and work with our partners to kind of prioritize the things that that we see as is most critical, and then help them kind of slowly over time in a lot of cases improve their operations through you know small pieces of of improvement. So yeah, it's a it it's it's a critical role in that sense, of course, and developing the relationship, but it also really helps the rest of our service teams deliver the support in a way that's very effective for our partners. Um one of the things I hear a lot about, I I have a lot of sales conversations and a lot of organizations coming to us and saying, I'm sick of managing my MSP. You know, I feel like I'm always calling them back. Uh they're not following the established process, they don't seem to know who I am, you know, and they don't know where my computers are, they don't know how many computers we have. Um absent a person really putting attention on those really critical things, that can happen.

Jenny Huftalen:

You know, you have a help desk that's focused on solving problems day to day, you have, you know, advanced engineers focusing on big problems. But if you don't have a person who really understands the organization, who has you know established the process, doc ented that process and make sure that our team understands it and and has it accessible to them,, you know, those gaps can start. And, you know, I think one of the things that the IT business managers deliver on in a huge, huge way is just making all the other systems work really well because they're so proactive around, you know, making sure those processes are clear and available to the rest of our staff.

Carolyn Woodard:

Yeah. I just want to make sure that we clarify when we say partners, we mean our clients, the nonprofit organizations that were we consider it a partnership and we want we have these long-term relationships and partnerships with our clients, but I just wanted to clarify it's not our vendors or consultants that we're partnering with, it's our our clients.

Jenny Huftalen:

Yeah. Thank you for yeah, clarifying that. And it is though also relevant to say, you know, a part of what they do as well is assist with your vendor management, right? As our our clients' vendors. And that is a huge headache for a lot of the clients we work with. And, you know, the vendors don't make it always super easy to navigate. And and again, the IT business manager role is there to help be an expert around you know what what these vendors are translating, kind of what's happening with your licenses or what's happening around pricing and what kind of changes they're making that'll impact your organization. And so they really do a great job of, you know, sort of understanding best of breed and and having those partnerships that can sort of translate and and communicate directly with the vendors so that you don't have to get caught up in that as well.

Carolyn Woodard:

Yeah, we often I always say in our webinars that it's our job to know the landscape, the IT landscape for nonprofits. And, I think that is what the IT business manager, that's their job, their role. That's what they bring. One of the many things that they bring is, you know, you might be wonderful at managing, you know, operations at your organization. And you may be really good at managing the IT, what you need, but it's very rare to find somebody in a COO, you know, or an executive director who knows like everything that's going on out there in IT land and what companies are doing what, which companies have discounts for nonprofits, like what are reputable. We always, I feel like 20 years ago or so, there were a lot of custom-built nonprofit tools like your fundraising tool or your database would be very custom built, or there would be a small company that just made this one thing, but they were the only one who could work on it. You know, it's like buying a car and then you just can't, like nobody can fix it.

Jenny Huftalen:

Sort of stuck with it. Yeah, yeah.

Carolyn Woodard:

So, we've really seen in the sector this move to, you know, well-established, reputable IT companies where you're not going to be locked into there's only one consultant in the United States and they can charge you an arm and a leg. You know, we get people onto standardized systems where there's lots of consultants that can help you. Um, you know, we can be an MSP, but you're not like stuck with with a very specific, and that's something that the IT business managers are keeping an eye on. Uh quality of the vendors too. Like, is this does this vendor get bought? Is there quality of customer service going down? And like you said, trying to translate, be that that translator of what are you, what do you need? What's your business problem you're trying to solve? What do you need? And what is that IT tool going to do for you?

Jenny Huftalen:

Yeah, exactly. Just taking it down to the very basics. And a lot of times when they come in,, you know, there's been some gap in effective operations. In some cases, you know, they've grown significantly and they just have not had the ability and the time to focus on making sure IT is growing with them. And so they're lacking process and they're lacking doc entation and you know, they're onboarding, very basics. Yeah, they don't know how many computers there are out there because they just were buying them and you know, and then the flip of that when when you consolidate and then you've got, you know, don't even again know how many devices are out there, who has them,, what where to start.

Carolyn Woodard:

What licenses you're paying for.

Jenny Huftalen:

Right. Yeah. What looking, you know, that is often where a lot of our IT business managers start with the new organizations is, you know, what are you paying for now? What what platforms are in operation? And, you know, let's look at an invoice and see, you know, and they can help guide around, well, these two things do the same thing. Um, and again, we we support nonprofit organizations that are chiefly focused on their mission. And in some cases,, we find it gives rightfully a lot of their staff freedom to say, you know, if you need a communication tool that's gonna help you more effectively, you know, work on grant making, then go out and get it. And you know, you have you can you can do that. Uh and that's great. But when you are in rapid growth mode and there's five different communication systems out there, all of a sudden it it can be problematic, not only because of the cost of that, but because of security issues, you know, around it as well. So they really get down to starting with very basics that can be the things that are the hardest for you know operations directors and in some cases finance directors or the people who have IT on their plate to have time for, you know. Um, so, you know, what was looking back at some of the examples of of recent activity that I'm aware of with with our IT business managers, and that's one thing that they did was just helped the organization. It's a a community-based organization up in New York, and they had they knew they had a lot of devices, they didn't know how many, they didn't know where to start. Um, and so TIFF, the IT business manager in that case, helped develop a survey, just an easy survey to send out to staff to say, what do you have in your house, you know, that may belong to this organization, tell us the make and model of it. Um and from there they developed a you know a good list of devices, and then she could say, you know, these are six years old, they're not usable. Um, so let's kind of put those aside and, oh, these ones are two to three years old. Um, those are, you know, if you don't have a purpose for them now, you may soon. So let's, you know, get them cleaned up, get them stored, updated. Yep, exactly. Um, and really just starting there allows, I think, you know, our our clients to just at least breathe a little bit and say, okay, at least there's not a bunch of devices out there that could be stolen and have our information on them. You know, that's a that's an anxiety that a lot of folks have when you don't know. Um, so you know, we we start with those basics and then build, you know, from there, or, build on policy from there, build on, you know, making sure that, you know, people know what process to follow when we bring in a new computer from here. So it's very yeah, bare bones. And then we we we aim to get things really just working, you know, efficiently and and again making sure IT is kind of aligned with where operations are going.

Carolyn Woodard:

And I think because we only work with nonprofits,, those IT business managers also are used to it. Like they have a lot of flexibility in how they approach. They know that nonprofits might have the budget for something right now, or they might be thinking, I want to make this change, but I'm gonna have to put this in a couple different grants and talk to our funders, and I'll probably have the budget for it in six months, maybe 12 months from now. Right. Our IT business managers like understand that. Yeah. They're happy to make suggestions as well. Like I used that example before that one of our IT business managers told me about how they also keep an eye on the help desk ticket and requests and they review those, you know, weekly, monthly, whatever makes sense for that client. And they can see, you know, you're getting 80% of your help ticket are from this one laptop. Right. Even if it's not six years old, like there's something going on with that laptop. Let's replace it or look and find out what is causing, because that's stopping someone from being able to work. Right. If they're always having this problem with their laptop. So the help desk isn't necessarily gonna see that or put two and two together because they're helping all of our clients all the time. But the IT project manager is looking at those patterns and looking at those, oh, these, you know, we have to budget to replace these five laptops, are now going to be out of, they're not gonna be able to be updated with security updates. So we're we're gonna give you the budgeting and the planning, the strategic thinking around how to handle those costs and build them in and know what's coming.

Jenny Huftalen:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. The sort of 30,000-foot view of of, you know, the situation. And, yeah, I think that's another area that is a little bit distinguishes that role from, say, in some cases, maybe like an account manager or some kind of rep who are often, you know, doing similar things in terms of you know talking to you, trying to understand, you know, where where you know areas that the network that could use support, but they're also often encouraged or incented to sell something as well and want to, you know, are probably in a lot of cases that's maybe how they are, you know, they they're paid, they get some incentives around that. And that is, you know, our our IT business managers again are kind of in the trenches with our with our clients, and they're yeah, looking for, you know, how do we make this more efficient? And let's not kind of whack-a-mole the same thing over and over again if it's not serving the organization. Um, streamline it, strip it down, you know, make sure that you're using your hard-earned nonprofit dollars toward, you know, toward solutions that are gonna actually again enhance mission and not kind of drag things down. Um so that's a real I and I think that just comes back to who community IT is as an organization. We are, you know, exclusively focused on nonprofits. We attract talent that are able to do, could could support organizations in the in the for-profit sector and go after a different type of engagement. Um, but they're really looking to see these missions be successful. And to do that, that always cost is primary concern in the nonprofit sector. And so they're, you know, between their relationships and their understanding of how these things operate, they they really have an eye toward identifying the most critical things that that need to be addressed and then yeah, being creative in some cases about holding off on some of those other priorities that may need to wait until the next grant comes through.

Carolyn Woodard:

Yeah, yeah. And they they it is so hard to hire IT managers, IT directors. It is just very, very difficult. And that's when often we get clients that come to us as someone who had been managing IT for years leaves. And there's just it's so, so hard to hire someone with those characteristics who has that IT and technical background, but also the business experience and can think strategically about what the real needs are of the organization and how to be creative and strategic. And, so that's something that you know, like we we it's hard for us to find them too, but when we do, we have these just wonderful people that develop these long-term relationships with their clients. And I think that's another piece of it that really adds that value is over time the IT business manager really gets to know the organization, the primary contact, their other contacts, you know, the staff, they're looking at these patterns, they're thinking about the mission and how this organization, like what IT is gonna help them be effective. And, and then when you have those kinds of relationships, I have another case story that I've told before where we work with an adult charter school in DC that does adult literacy and workforce development and is often working with their students or working, you know, parents, or they are trying to get back into the workforce after, you know, you know, making a career change, something like that. Some of them have very low literacy. That's part of what this charter school does. And so they had been working with their IT business manager around supporting students remotely, because in many cases, those students, if they're taking care of a family, it would be easier for them to take classes remotely, but that involves a lot of support. And that's something that this nonprofit does, right? Is understand the students, where the students are coming from, and that if you have a low, you know, like tech savviness, you're you can't just give someone a laptop. They're gonna need support to be able to log in and find where their classes are and how they take them online and all of that kind of student support. So they've been working on this plan. I believe it was for like a four-year plan of how we're gonna support students remotely. And the pandemic came. And if you everyone on listening remembers, that was kind of the spring, you know, like schools just closed and classes stopped, and there wasn't even a final exam you just passed. And so that that charter school came to us and said, you know, we're talking with our funder and we want to be able to do this by September. Like, can we get every student a laptop and be able to support them remotely so they can take remote classes this September? So they won't lose that time. They're working on these, you know, associate's degrees, they're working on getting their GEDs in some cases, they're working on getting into the workforce. Uh, we don't want to just stop. And so, you know, our IT business manager, I don't think they could have done it without him because he had the long-term relationship with them. He they already had the plan. They had the strategic plan. They just needed to make it happen in three months instead of three years. Right. So their funder as well looked at this plan and looked at our connections and their connections and said, you know, you've got everything you need to do this. We'll fund it. Let's do it. And so they all worked all s mer. You talked to them, it was exhausting.

Jenny Huftalen:

Yes, yes, they remember. Yeah.

Carolyn Woodard:

And, but they they had all the people in place. And like you said, they're people, people, you know, that you you can't go to a funder and say, Oh, I'm gonna find these relationships.

Jenny Huftalen:

Exactly. Yeah, I'm gonna take a risk on hoping, you know, it's a good idea.

Carolyn Woodard:

Maybe someone's gonna help me. Yeah.

Jenny Huftalen:

Right, right. Yeah, it's so true. I I have Another organization reach out to me recently just giving you know feedback on on what a great job the IT business manager was doing, and they referred to them as the bat phone. You know, it's just like the any any sort of question, problem, thought that came up, thing they saw in the news, you know. Obviously, again, AI is the thing that are coming across these people's desk and it's like what to do with this. And, you know, just they pick up and they call their IT business manager and they, you know, talk through it and and you know, just having that peace of mind that again, it's that person is taking ownership of, you know, they're making sure they're served in in a way that's, you know, gonna be meeting their needs and and an awareness of all the little intangibles, you know, and then they really do have to be savvy in understanding, you know, we're not of course there are organizational things that every organization needs, you know, and then there are people at the end of the day that we're supporting, and people have personalities and different motivations and they relate to each other in ways that affect how businesses are operated. And, you know, I think our our people are again very good at kind of understanding that, navigating that in a professional way to make sure that, you know, they can help guide folks to to the solutions that are gonna you know move them forward. So, yeah, I just thought that was funny. The bat phone, I think, is a really apt way to kind of describe what these IT BMs are doing, you know, day in and day out to support our organizations.

Carolyn Woodard:

Yeah, someone else called it to me IT management therapy.

Jenny Huftalen:

Yeah.

Carolyn Woodard:

Oh yeah, that's you can call that person and just bounce ideas off of them or just you know, vent about some tool that's just not working out. And then that IT business manager has the background and relationship with you to be able to, you know, troubleshoot, like think about like what are the reasons that tool isn't working? And are there cost-effective ways that we can make it better? Is it really just past its usefulness and you need to find a different solution? Which is a whole big project itself. So, like finding out that your tool does what you need it to do, it's maybe you haven't done the tutorials on the upgrades. You know, an IT business manager can can kind of help you troubleshoot at that level with you. And then, you know, we talk about relationships, and I had mentioned like what if some your IT director leaves, you know, that you know, for us, we have this, you know, group of IT business managers, and they all are just so confident and so lovely. And that's our, you know, it's our part of our job is if there's a transition on our end, we you know, can we have another person that they can hand it over to without dropping all of those balls. I remember Johan Hammerstone, our CEO, said it to me one time about how sometimes the IT manager or director, especially if they've been at your nonprofit for a long time and they retire. This one guy retired. And Johan described it as the guy at the on the late show with the plates spinning on the sticks. And he was like, no one else at that organization knew they can't spin those plates. No one could spin even one plate, and they didn't know how he was keeping all of the plates up in, and he probably didn't even know like all the little things he was doing to just keep systems kind of working. Um so that is something that's on our it's on our plate. It's on our plate. I totally mixed our metaphors there, but we're that guy. We're the person that's holding all the sticks, spinning all the plates, and you know, you can ask us about any of those systems and concerns that you have,, you know, your cybersecurity, your infrastructure, your email. Like you can't have an office without email, and that's that's right, what we do basically.

Jenny Huftalen:

Yeah, absolutely. Um, yeah, I think that's a it's a a great point on the continuity plan because like, yeah, organizations are gonna have people come and go. Um, and a lot of times, especially if you had a person who's doing it for a very long time, they're doing it their way, and that way works great for them. But a lot of you can't replicate a h an, you know, that that's just not doable. So having another external person with a set of kind of priorities and doc enting those things, knowing kind of what you need to prioritize first and having that clearly defined,, and establishing process around things that again, you know, everybody's guilty of this. You just do the thing and you're used to it and you do it your way. I don't have time to sit down and write down.

Carolyn Woodard:

You have it in your brain, like exactly how to remember to do that thing. Yeah.

Jenny Huftalen:

Absolutely. And so to have again a person who's focused on making sure that those things are written down and that they're kept current because they do change over time. And then when you do have some changes or turnover and leadership,, you know, that person who's been there for years can come in and say, well, this is what I was working with from with so and so, and these are our processes around that, and this is what we had to table for a while and maybe think about that. You know, those those kinds of consistent, you know, communication and and and focus exclusively on that component of your operations is handled by somebody who's a professional and like you said, has has seen so many different things. You know, they manage not just one organization, they they have you know several clients where you know you start to see similarities, you start to see how other organizations have handled things, and they bring all of that knowledge you know to the to the engagement.

Carolyn Woodard:

And there's a team as well. So not only have they seen what's working and not working at their other clients that might be similar or might, you know, have some ideas on adding value or saving money or what have you at your organization, but they can also, you know, they have weekly meetings with their team of ITE business managers. So they're all sharing what's working, what's not working, best practices, doc entation, you know, that just it like you get so much more than the one person with that whole team.

Jenny Huftalen:

Yeah, and I think it just again to that point of out, you know, of course, we work with the big players in in tech, and things change very quickly. And being able to have a person, you know, you're you might hear a notice or something that, oh, Microsoft's changing the way they're handling their licenses. Broadly, that information out there can be hard to understand where that what that means for you. And, you know, when we have those scenarios, we we tend to have the IT business managers do the direct communication with their clients because it it generally means different things for different organizations that have different licensing structure, have different budgets. And so instead of community IT sending a blanket announcement about this thing that's happening, we we rely on our IT business managers who know their audience very well to say in that meeting, hey, here's what's coming up, you know, in this year and how you need to prioritize around it. Um so you know, combining the sort of standards with somewhat of a bespoke approach,, you know, I think is a really nice combination here that we're able to have.

Carolyn Woodard:

Yeah, when Microsoft says, oh, we're you know, ending support for this, and the client's like, What does that mean? And our ITBM can say, Oh, you already upgraded. You're you don't have to worry about it.

Jenny Huftalen:

You're all set.

Carolyn Woodard:

Yeah.

Jenny Huftalen:

Yeah. We talked about that last year and now it's happening. Yeah, that does happen a lot too. Yeah. For sure.

Carolyn Woodard:

Great. Well, I think we really recovered it. I mean, we're obviously very proud of the team and the role and see a need to have this because we only work with nonprofits. I'm sure MSPs that are in other, you know, work with other types of organizations might have other specialized roles that are, you know, just for the type of or company that they work with. Um, but for us, working with nonprofits, this long-term relationship with both that technical background and a business background so that they can understand the technology and also be looking at business strategies for the client partners is just really we found it to be very important and to add a lot of value.

Jenny Huftalen:

Absolutely. Yeah, I think it's a really critical piece to to our to our approach to support. And, yeah, they're and they're also just cool, nice people. So we're lucky to have some great staff. Exactly.

Carolyn Woodard:

Well, well-managed IT, right?

Jenny Huftalen:

That's what that's what we're looking for. That's what we're after, exactly.

Carolyn Woodard:

Well, thank you, Jenny, for sharing this time with me today and explaining more about this role. That was really very helpful. And I hope the audience also could think about. If you don't have an MSP that has this,, if you, you know, in your own structure, you might want to make sure that you have somebody that is thinking about both the business aspects and the IT management aspects and pulling them together. And hopefully this gives you some ideas.

Jenny Huftalen:

All right, thank you, Carolyn.