Your IT infrastructure is like any other part of your business. It needs to function well, it needs to have a strategy that supports your business aims and it needs to have a plan to scale. Without those elements, your IT, and therefore your business, will struggle to perform at their best – and this could hamper future growth.
So how do you ensure your IT is on point? Well, to know where you are heading, you first need to know where you are – which is why we recommend conducting an audit of your IT environment.
This helps you to understand a number of things, such as:
- Your security risks
- The quality of your systems and processes
- Where you’re leaking money
- The parts of your IT environment that need investment
- Readiness for scaling
An IT audit will come with a roadmap that will help you incrementally improve your IT environment. The improvements are in-line with your specific business, its current needs, and its plans for the future. Changes will be made little and often, meaning that disruptions are kept to a minimum and future costs are planned for and can be built into the company’s yearly budget.
These factors will underpin your company’s success. The standards against which your IT is audited are industry best practices and therefore in line with the most current approaches. Moreover, major risks are addressed as a matter of urgency, while small incremental improvements to your environment reduce your risk of major disruptions and service outages – which can be costly and damaging to the business.
By reviewing and refining your systems and processes the audit and subsequent roadmap can fix inefficiencies, improve productivity, and plan for future capabilities that will leave your company ready to scale if and when it needs to.
In a similar vein, by reducing costs and planning for incremental upgrades of hardware and software, your IT will become more cost-effective and the machines and platforms you use will be better able to support your organisation as it grows. By keeping costs upfront you have greater transparency overspend and are able to clearly see and justify where further investment in the department needs to be made.
An audit may seem like a nice to do – but it can in fact be a real driver for growth in the organisation. It not only identifies and addresses weaknesses and problems before they cause damage, but helps to establish a strong foundation from which to scale and a strategy that supports the company for years to come.
For more information on IT audits, visit Nutbourne.com