Time for an IT Checkup?

This is a good time of year to take a step back, review, and plan for various information technology facets of your organization. Given that IT and related resources consume a significant portion of most organizations’ capital and operational expenditures, managers and business owners are advised to perform an annual review of all IT-related investments and capabilities to ensure they are fully aligned with their objectives.

Here are four areas we recommend for review:

1. Hardware and Infrastructure–These form the backbone of all of your IT systems. Do you have the right servers, workstations, computing and storage capacities, and internal and external communication capabilities in place to best support your computing needs?
2. Software and Process–Application software is the “bread and butter” of IT; it is what enables business capabilities, efficiency, and effectiveness. How recently have you reviewed your key business applications and supporting process capabilities in accounting, operations, sales, and management decision-making? Do you have the right tools to enable you to achieve your business goals?
3. Security and Continuity–Most organizations are so dependent on their IT capabilities that any sort of data breach, system hack, or disaster could bring these capabilities to a halt. How recently have you assessed your cyber and information security readiness, and developed and tested your disaster recovery and business continuity plans?
4. People and Resources–You can have the best IT systems in place, but without proper ongoing support and improvement resources, systems will fail to deliver desired results. How recently have you conducted a critical review of your existing internal and external resource capabilities to ensure your ongoing support and system improvement efforts are set up in a way to best leverage technology’s rapidly-changing landscape?

Now is a good time to perform a high level analysis of the four key pillars of your organization’s IT systems to ensure the proper initiatives are identified and are tightly aligned with your business priorities, in order to maximize the highest investment returns this year.

Sassan S. Hejazi can be reached at Email or 215.441.4600.

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