Technology powers most businesses these days, making it crucial to have a sound IT strategy. While you may be tempted to buy the latest software or upgrade your hardware, it’s not always practical or advisable. At the same time, you don’t want to be stuck with obsolete technology and insecure systems. Incorporate the tips below into your IT strategy to ensure that technology properly powers your business without overwhelming it.
Set Priorities
Does your IT team spend the bulk of its time reacting to problems rather than working on more important initiatives? Is every request marked “urgent”? While you definitely want your team to respond to urgent problems, not all problems are truly urgent.
What often happens when everything is considered urgent is that nothing really happens. It’s all about putting out fires and not about moving forward on more important IT tasks.
Here’s one way to contend with this all-too-common problem. First, have your team define what it considers urgent such as a network issue that could cause downtime or a system alert indicating an intrusion taking place. Those are high priority tasks which absolutely must be handled right away. For everything else, assign lower priority levels and schedule them accordingly. Make sure your most important IT initiatives are considered high priority tasks.
Delegate Tasks
Now, who’s going to handle all these tasks?
As you know, your IT team has a lot to handle, day in, day out. Many IT departments are simply spread too thin, even in the absence of urgent requests. They may not have the time or resources needed to perform routine tasks, let alone urgent ones.
As technology changes and your business grows, you’ll add to their workload with new initiatives to deploy and new training requirements. It seems there are never enough hours in the day; and while your team is always busy, it also seems as if nothing is being accomplished.
Empower your IT decision maker to delegate lower priority tasks as needed. This is especially helpful and easy when you have technical consultants from Quikteks on your side. With an outsourced IT strategy led by Quikteks, we can respond to tech support inquiries for your business, allowing your IT technicians to focus on their core responsibilities and projects that will take your business forward.
Optimize Your Network
Your business is growing, but is your network keeping up? Growing businesses typically strain the network and its resources thanks to an increase in usage and traffic.
Unexpected traffic surges can slow your network down, making it nearly impossible to get anything done. Avoid potential downtime and keep your team productive by having QuikTeks analyze and optimize your network to handle current and future growth.
Finally, your entire IT strategy should be reviewed periodically by an external expert. We understand that you may be attached to your favorite programs or systems, but they could be holding you back. Sometimes a fresh set of eyes can see what you can’t. Bring QuikTeks in for an objective evaluation of your entire IT infrastructure. Our consultants can suggest improvements you may not have ever considered.
For more information about our IT solutions, give us a call at (973) 882-4644.