What Does Landscaping Have to Do With Specialized IT? (Everything, Actually.)

Quick personal story: we’re currently doing some landscaping at our house. I don’t happen to have a particularly green thumb, so I needed to replace some plants that weren’t “cooperating” on one side of our house. Okay, the truth is I couldn’t keep the plants alive.

I went back to the big-box retailer where I got the plants the first time and asked the “expert” in the garden center about what to do. He recommended a different type of plant. Okay, great. I bought the plants and planted them when I got back home.

A few weeks later, the new plants were dead too. I followed all the big-box-store garden expert’s suggestions and the plants still died. A voice in my head began reciting the definition of “insanity”…

I called up a friend of mine who runs a landscaping company. He recommended I go to a nursery; they specialize in plants, after all, and they would know what to do.

I’d never been to a nursery before, so I figured I’d give it a shot. They started off asking a bunch of questions that the big-box expert never bothered (or maybe didn’t even know) to ask. Within five short minutes, they had already diagnosed my problem: deer were eating my plants. The experts at the nursery recommended a few deer-resistant plants that also fit the shade profile of that side of the house. As an added bonus, the new plants they recommended also worked great with the rest of the landscaping around the rest of the house. It looks even better than it did before!

Who’s getting my business the next time? Well, my first call is to my landscaping friend to ask his recommendations. But then, it’s an easy decision: I’m going to rely on the specialized expertise at the nursery.

Granted, I’m not going be able to get my lightbulbs, lumber and end-cap circus peanuts in the same trip, like I could at the big-box store, but at least I know that when I go to the nursery that I’m getting the specialized expertise where it matters most.

So, what does landscaping have to do with specialized IT expertise? Everything, actually. Healthcare groups and financial services firms have landscaping problems, and they rely on their peers and industry resources as their trusted landscaper to recommend the best solutions. When it comes to healthcare IT and financial services IT, we’re the nursery providing the specialized expertise to homeowners.

 

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