Our Insight Program is a three stage program that will identify the strong and weak points in your IT infrastructure. It gives you the information and opportunity to drive home improvements that ensure your investment is supporting your business.
At the end of the process we will report to your board to explain our findings and to make recommendations about how to improve the network.
We work at all levels by interviewing staff to identify frustrations, a technical audit of the hardware and by getting an insight into your business plan from the board or IT manager.
Ask yourself these questions:
- Does your IT investment support the aims in your business plan?
- Do you want to make IT work for you and help drive your business forward?
- Which devices are critical to your business and what would happen if they went wrong?
- Are staff telling you the network is slow?
- Do you know that everything is backed up and that you can recover from disaster?
- Can the wrong people access your data?
- Is there an asset list showing how many devices exist and what software is installed?
- Do you know if you are licensed and compliant?
- Could a viruses attack your network?
- What procedures and policies are in place to make sure your staff and getting the most from IT?
- Do you know how many IT problems have been logged this year, month, week?
If you cant answer all of these easily then our program will definitely give benefit.
Gathering information
We start by meeting with the management team to find out what the IT strategy is for your business and how important you all think it is.
This can be either a board room discussion, or a series of one to one meetings depending on the size of business.
We then extend the process by questioning your staff members and checking that your statements are actually in practice and are truly embedded into daily use.
Sometimes users give conflicting views and this will lead to investigation into a potential problem. This can identify a training need or perhaps a change of process.
Technical review
The process now leads directly to a technical review where we check security, software licensing, vulnerability, asset logging, procedures for logging and resolving IT issues etc.
We check every device by running a software tool and capturing key information. This time is used to check age, performance and capacity of every PC and server.
We will run a network scan to check for hidden equipment, for vulnerabilities and also for general network configuration.
Finally we use our wide experience to spot and predict problems that can’t be measured but experience shows will be there.
Outcomes
At the end of the process we will meet with the board to discuss;
- A series of recommendations for what can be done to improve the network , IT systems and procedures.
This includes technical work, possible training, re allocation of existing equipment etc. - Asset list for all IT hardware.
- A comprehensive list of software titles including the quantity installed.
This helps you make sure you are fully licensed, or can take steps to remove unwanted software. - Recommendations for an on-going IT budget and any equipment you should plan to replace.
- A list of critical equipment and any warranties / contracts in place.
- A list of all of your IT suppliers with contact details.
- Network map showing all equipment with location, network address and user.
- Recommendations for IT policies and procedures that are worth implementing.
At the end of the meeting you can use our report to drive improvements through.
We spent the last few days desperately installing generators for our clients in Scotland - trying to get ready for the XMAS period amongst strikes and power cuts.
If only you provided generators, then power would be as reliable as the network you set up for us. That never goes wrong - if a line fails the system automatically connects to the spare line and our customers keep running! Well done.
You made a real difference to our business, because you stopped us getting a massive surge of calls each time there was a line fault.