Dear Bob ... My IT group has a pretty good reputation, although there are always those complain about speed of response, and feel that we're a black hole from which nothing ever emerges. So I have decided to devote time and budget to an IT PR campaign. Part of it involves better communication about the status of service requests. Another part involves better communication about project status. Third, as a genera Dear Bob …My IT group has a pretty good reputation, although there are always those complain about speed of response, and feel that we’re a black hole from which nothing ever emerges. So I have decided to devote time and budget to an IT PR campaign. Part of it involves better communication about the status of service requests. Another part involves better communication about project status. Third, as a general good-will-builder, I’m thinking of holding a contest and offering a new and several refurbished PCs as prizes for correctly answering half a dozen or so riddles and brain-teasers. What do you think of this idea? What else might we do?– Image-conscious Dear Conscious …One at a time: I like it, I like it, and I don’t like it at all.First off, I do like the idea of an IT PR function, although I suggest you call it nearly anything else, since to anyone who already suspects you of wasting valuable corporate resources will interpret the name as “boondoggle.” Call it a communication function.Better communication about service requests and project status has a number of valuable consequences. The first is to make clear that IT is delivering important results, and which important results it’s delivering. A key to success here is to go beyond the “what” to the “so what.” Don’t just talk about what you’ve delivered. Describe it’s impact on the business.Now about that contest. In contrast to the first two ideas, which were entirely businesslike in nature, this one will strike the very people you’re trying to convince that (a) you have time to spend on frivolities, and (b) you’re giving away business equipment for no obvious business purpose. Since you’re already thinking in marketing terms, think of this in terms of brand and image. The kind of contest you’re contemplating violates your brand.If you’re looking for a third topic to communicate, develop a reasonable measure of operations performance – uptime, response-time benchmarks or some such. I don’t recommend the use of service levels for this, by the way, as they do an admirable job of explaining what percent of the time performance was barely good enough – a peculiar thing to brag about, when you stop to analyze it.But you can develop decent measures that do present your performance. Start with your business goal (no, not IT’s business goal – the goal the business has that keeping systems up supports) and turn that into a measure. – Bob ——– Technology Industry