The busy tax season has ended. Now you can turn your attention to a mid-year check of your business. Specifically, you want to know how well your IT infrastructure is performing and supporting your operations. But where do you begin? It is not your area of expertise, and simply maintaining your systems and answering support questions keep your internal IT staff busy full time.
Consider enlisting the help of professionals at a Chicago managed IT service. Its consultants can do your mid-year tech check and optimize your Chicago business by enhancing your IT infrastructure.
Review
An effective mid-year check begins with a review of your business goals. IT goals play an important role in your business planning and strategy. The consultants at the Chicago IT managed service can review your goals, assess your progress toward those goals, and determine how to align your infrastructure’s performance with those objectives. (If you do not include IT goals in your overall business strategy, enlist the aid of these consultants to help you set IT aims that align with your business goals.)
A managed IT service provider can also review your adherence to your internal or external compliance standards. A mid-year tech check should ensure you are following your own data backup and disaster recovery procedures. Have new compliance issues surfaced? The IT professional can bring your system into compliance.
Renovate
The licensed professionals at a managed IT service stay current on the latest technology and IT processes. They know how to monitor your network’s performance and evaluate the cyber threats to your system. Their mid-year tech check will include a review of the two key components of your infrastructure – software applications and hardware devices.
· Software – Have all the latest patches been applied to your software applications? Are your software licenses in effect or are they nearing their expiration? How effective are your cybersecurity applications? Do your software tools continue to ‘play well’ together?
· Hardware – How old are your workstations? Do they need to be replaced? Are your servers aging? Are you relying on in-house data storage? Or do you need to consider moving from managing your own data center to employing cloud-based storage?
A Chicago managed IT service can make the changes to your IT infrastructure to keep your current system secure and efficient.
Reimagine
Renovating your current IT infrastructure may keep it running, but are you doing a tune-up on a 15-year-old car or a one-year-old vehicle? You can stop at renovating your network, but the consultants at the managed IT service can help you reimagine your IT environment. For example, rather than offering your employees several disparate software tools, you might consider moving to a single, more integrated, collaborative application.
After reviewing your business goals, the managed services provider may help you integrate IoT (internet of things) tools into your operations. These tools provide useful tracking capabilities and collect data useful to you in making key business decisions.
Are IT support calls stealing too much of your staff’s time? A Chicago managed IT service provider can field these calls for you, educate your employees to reduce issues, or install an AI-powered Help Desk application.
Mid-year is a great time to do an IT check. Enlist the professional help of a Chicago managed IT services provider, like the professionals at JMA Consulting. They can review, renovate, and reimagine your IT infrastructure and ultimately optimize your business.