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No one disputes that these skills are hard to acquire,
relatively few people have significant hands-on experience in either area,
and the enticing offers from headhunters abound.
Next down on the “totem pole” think about one of the
more “intermediate” level people: a PC support manager or a LAN
administrator.
Finally, consider some of the more “entry level”
positions such as Help Desk Operator levels 1 and 2, desktop support
specialist, and mainframe operator.
Salaries will be dependent both on levels of experience
and how scarce the skills are relative to the market demand.
Systems Integrators Hierarchy of Skills, Salary and Job Levels
Applying the same logic, systems integrators providing
services that nearly anyone can offer will be at the lower-end of the
“food chain” (Being at the low end of the “food chain” means that
these means commodity systems integrators dine at establishments where
plastic lids come on the soft drinks served in paper cups).
These systems integrators also don’t leave themselves
much time or energy for higher margin services or value-added
opportunities. For example, if the bread and butter service of a systems
integrator's business is in a commodity area such as warranty service on
laser printers or teaching introductory Windows classes, that systems
integrator will be forced to keep their prices low to stay competitive in
a highly crowded market. They’re struggling in a low margin, high volume
business.
At the other end of the spectrum are systems integrators
who accurately forecast next quarter’s and next year’s “hot”
technologies. They keep their skills sharp year-after-year, and
accordingly maintain high service margins.
It’s never a struggle to add value to their clients’
solutions as this type of systems integrator is far ahead of the curve.
Based on what small businesses require for SBS-centric solutions,
today’s “hot” value-added skills would include developing groupware
or other collaborative solutions, creating electronic commerce enabled web
sites, architecting knowledge management solutions built on relational
databases, and implementing remote access servers and wide area
connections.
If you take the view that it takes a few years for a skill
to move from “leading edge” to a “dime a dozen” commodity,
you’ll understand that all hot skills have a certain shelf life at which
point they have get “reduced for clearance.” That’s all the more
reason to for systems integrators to carefully plan their training
investments into their schedule each year.
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