Building Efficiency in Your IT Department #2 – Creating Your IT Roadmap

Effectively leveraging technology is a necessity for any successful organization.  And your technology systems require ongoing, effectual management and maintenance – necessitating creation of systems and processes to avoid issues such as constant unplanned work, out of budget spending and aging, at-risk systems.  We began this series last month, covering technology ticketing and asset management systems.  This month we address creating an IT plan and budget.

Developing Your IT Roadmap – Where Are You Headed?

Daily effectiveness comes from the concept of a destination and I highly advocate starting with an operational IT plan, employing the following process:

• Meet with key stakeholders of your company to get feedback on their IT dreams (dream big), IT needs, and current IT issues.
• Meet one-on-one with stakeholders to demonstrate different IT possibilities that exist, based on their dreams.
• Research and propose various technologies; outline the problems they solve, their price points, implementation time and ongoing support requirements.
• Organize the resulting projects on a “white board”; include associated costs and time estimates on each, and work with key leadership to lay out priority.  Consider pricing out and proposing what it would take to get more work done sooner, either by employing consultants or temporary hires.
• Develop a draft plan for Senior Leadership to use to re-prioritize, make decisions, and foster excitement.  At this stage, discussion topics should include a review of the budget to implement each item of the plan and to support these new systems long term.
• Finalize your IT roadmap.

Look to the Cloud

When creating your IT plan look at all available solutions including Software as a Service (“SaaS” or “Cloud”). The theme of the IT Plan should revolve around process improvement, efficiency, and mitigating risk, and cloud solutions can address all these factors. Certain functions of an IT environment are prime candidates for cloud solutions; email is always number one on my list, and phone and cloud file systems are other prime candidates. These three systems are typically very straightforward, easy to migrate, and more often than not the cloud versions offer improved features while maintaining existing workflows.

Email – Office365 or Google Apps

Phone Systems

Key features to look for:

• Dedicated direct dials for each employee in sequential order
• Physical phones and software based dialing options
• Works on your ISP, Comcast, FIOS, etc.
• Voicemail to Email features

Cloud File Systems – Dropbox or Box.com

Points to take into account:

• Laptop environment
• Need for encryption
• Does your data require a traditional file server

Consider This

Consider the following questions as you work on the plan:

• What can we do now to improve IT based on current business operations?
• How old are our systems, what’s our current risk, how much time per day do we spend on upkeep vs new work?
• Are remote workers able to collaborate as easily as onsite workers?
• Will electronic signature software be more effective for legal?
• Could check scanning improve cash flow and controls?

An effective technology department is essential to leveraging technology for your business’ success. 　Implementing the steps outlined in this article should result in a viable 1-2 year operational IT roadmap to support both productive technology systems and an effective IT department.  We recommend that you embrace the processes we have outlined above to help your organization thrive.

If you have questions on designing an IT plan or would like to learn about the other technology services offered at Insource, please contact me at rgreenwald@insourceservices.com or 781-235-1490.

And watch for next month’s newsletter for the final installment of this series, covering the topics of: Proactive Network Management and IT Risk.