Are Your IT Services Aligned With An IT Strategy?
It doesn’t matter how skilled your internal IT team is — without a high-level IT plan, you’re most likely just going from one tech problem to the next, with no strategy that will align your technology with your business goals. Every successful application of IT services has one thing in common: IT strategy. Read on to find out how to align your IT services with an IT strategy.
How Do You Develop a Technology Strategy?
Building a robust and effective technology strategy comes down to answering the right questions:
Where Are You Now?
To best understand your current situation, it’s important to audit your IT infrastructure, perform a risk assessment, and analyze a high-level five-year plan.
Where Are You Going?
To figure out where you want to be, it is helpful to understand where you are in your technology refresh cycles, learn about modern technology trends and how they can be applied to your business, and set expectations for your entire IT team to strategically mitigate risks. A reputable IT Services and Support partner can guide your business to success.
How Do You Get There?
To form a robust IT strategy, you need to identify strategic objectives as well as business goals, build scorecards to track progress, and begin to execute your strategy.
What Is Involved with Strategic Planning for Technology?
IT Strategy Aligns IT Services with Your Organizational Goals
Often, technology is an afterthought, and as a result, some investments don’t deliver the desired outcomes due to a lack of strategic planning. IT investments can be costly, so it is important to make the right decisions upfront to avoid overspending.
Most businesses operate on tight budgets, however, the use of the right technology can increase productivity and efficiency, outweighing the cost and driving value.
When evaluating the right technology for your business, the first step is to consult with your IT services company or search for an IT services company that has experience working with businesses like yours.
Your IT services company should provide an IT assessment that examines the technology you use and identify what’s lacking in relation to your culture, process, and financial requirements.
IT Strategy Evaluates Your IT Services to Determine If You Need a Change
Many businesses continue to use legacy technology systems that are inefficient and difficult to navigate. With today’s newer, cloud-based solutions, your business can have the technology you need at a fraction of traditional up-front costs. There are customized, industry-specific cloud solutions that can help you remove data silos, optimize your resources, and improve operations and efficiencies. By exploring these innovations, it’s possible to leverage business intelligence that will help you overcome some of the most common IT challenges.
IT Strategy Keeps Your IT Services Focused on Security Best Practices
Information security must be a top priority to mitigate your risks and protect your business’ confidential data. With the right technologies in place, you lessen the chances of a costly data breach and avoid hefty fines, penalties, expensive litigation, and a damaged reputation.
IT strategy-focused cybersecurity policies must have three main objectives:
- Confidentiality of data and information assets and to confine these to only those authorized to access them.
- Integrity of data to keep it intact, complete, and accurate, and to keep IT systems running reliably.
- Availability of data and IT systems which are accessible to authorized users when required.
Let Sourcepass Be Your Strategic Advisor for All Things IT
Sourcepass can augment any internal resources, help consolidate and optimize IT systems, establish budgeting and cost-control processes, oversee your cybersecurity from a macro view, and make sure that the implementation of new technologies doesn’t disrupt your business operations or put them at risk.
Your IT strategy isn’t a one-time task so it is important to have a dedicated strategic advisor to work alongside your team to provide ongoing guidance, support, and services.
If you are interested in finding out how Sourcepass can help you align IT services with your IT strategy, contact Noelle Hunter, Vice President of Sales at (877) 678-8080.
