i View

Communications Skills Inside the Company

Posted on October 27, 2015 by David Gillman

Most IT people have to interact with people from some other department in the company. And for most IT people writing reports from IBM i data, this interaction probably happens on a higher than average basis. Writing reports and creating views of data useful to business people requires communicating with others in relevant departments.

Most IBM i technical people have been working with other departments so long that talking business is normal. That is just how the system was designed to be run—with a lean IT staff that is very close to business operations.

For those individuals who are new to the IBM i platform but come from other parts of IT, this level of business knowledge might be different than what they are used to. It would definitely be to their benefit to sit down and learn a little more about business operations. Almost certainly, if they are now responsible for IBM i, then they are now responsible for the ERP, too. Supporting the ERP requires familiarity with the business processes performed by the ERP system.

I have seen some low key meetings, usually one-on-one, with key business people really helping the IT person who is new to IBM i get a handle on operations. Some of our most successful customers have informal NGS-IQ user groups that periodically meet over lunch to share ideas and cross-train each other on business and software functions. Let us know if you would like to try that, and we'll buy lunch for your first meeting.

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