In today’s competitive business environment, achieving alignment between your organization’s objectives and your IT is critical. Fixing IT issues when they arise is no longer enough on its own. Instead, your technology should have a strategic role in your business, allowing you to achieve better business outcomes by acting as a springboard for growth and innovation. One of the fundamental factors in achieving this alignment is the application of IT standards and best practices.
IT standards and best practices help to codify and structure the way your IT is delivered, helping to streamline infrastructure and ensure consistency across your environment. This in turn will help you reach new heights of efficiency and propel you towards your organizational goals.
In this short article, we’ll explore the benefits IT standards and best practices can bring to your business, allowing you to hone in on critical issues and arrive at the best possible outcomes for your customers, and your business.
Stimulate Growth and Boost Efficiency through IT Standards and Best Practices
Standards and best practices can help you:
Simplify and Streamline Complex Processes and Systems
Consider your business as a whole. Are there any processes and systems that cause constant headaches for you and your team, resulting in inconsistent outcomes and tasks that take far longer than they should?
Technology as a general rule is becoming more complex, data is being stored in multiple software applications and cloud services, people are working remotely or in a hybrid environment, and cyber security threats are changing daily. In these fast paced times it is imperative that you have a scheduled review process to ensure all portions of your tech infrastructure are kept up to today’s standards and best practices. In the past, an IT provider might have used the “set it and forget it” mentality but that’s no longer enough.
A truly proactive approach to IT Management requires a well thought out set of processes and procedures to ensure every device on the network meets today’s standards. This will help improve the Stability and Security of your network and allow you to focus on business goals instead of reacting to technology headaches. Modern technology can help with this, there are centralized cloud hosting solutions and collaboration platforms, as well as unified communications solutions on the market that can streamline the management of your IT infrastructure. Alongside using technology, you can implement a more streamlined operational approach to managing your IT through applying an Integrated IT Service Management framework in your business.
Streamlining, simplifying and standardizing processes is one of the most impactful ways to arrive at efficient, consistent outcomes in any business.
Practice Continual Improvement
It’s important to continuously review your IT practices and look for ways to introduce improvements. Consider setting up a continual improvement framework, whereby every month, quarter or year, you assess your current practices and standards and look for ways to optimize them.
Take cybersecurity as an example. By undertaking periodic vulnerability scans and security audits you can draw attention to vulnerabilities and apply fixes to continually update your security posture. This dynamic approach to cybersecurity will ensure weaknesses are promptly rectified and resilience is maintained in the face of emerging cyber threats.
Bring Your Team into the Conversation
Involving your team in the conversation around standards and practices ensure everyone is on the same page and understands their role in their implementation. This collaborative approach provides opportunities for employees to ask questions, and helps everyone grasp the importance of adhering to any new rules and structures.
Consider the introduction of a new information security standard as a case in point here. Here, you’d want to express the objectives the new standard is there to achieve, and open the floor to questions staff might have about how they’ll ensure successful implementation. By engaging your team in this way, they’ll have a better understanding of the risks to data the new standard is there to address, and be better equipped to apply the standard on a day-to-day basis.
Seek Precise Insights
Whenever you’re seeking out information, make sure you ask clear, unambiguous and objective questions that leave little room for misunderstandings. This way you’ll receive a precise, accurate response, and be given exactly the information you were looking for.
Take a network infrastructure assessment as an example. Instead of navigating the exercise haphazardly, request specific information that provides real utility, such as information relating to network latency, bandwidth requirements and security measures. That way you’ll gain useful, actionable insights that can be used to drive improvements and address current issues, thus enabling the delivery of robust, dependable IT infrastructure.
Tier 3 IT Solutions – Apply IT Best Practices and Standards with Help from the Best
As we’ve discussed, applying IT best practices and standards is vital to achieving your goals and elevating your business to new heights or efficiency, productivity and growth. To fully realize the benefits of these practices however, you need a trusted and committed IT partner with the drive to help your business thrive through technology. That’s where we come in.
Tier 3 IT Solutions can help align your technology with your business objectives and long-term vision. Our rigorous assessment process will closely consider your needs in order to build an IT strategy that addresses issues and inefficiencies using industry-leading solutions. With our continuous support, you can apply the best IT standards and practices across your business, providing your team with fully optimized infrastructure that helps them perform at their very best.
Get in touch today to find out how Tier 3 IT Solutions can help level-up your IT.
