Business Technology Planning End-of-Year Checklist
Effective Business Technology Planning is Integral to Ensure You’re Able to Avoid Budgeting Challenges and Conflicting Priorities That Slow Your Execution Time Down and Lower Your Return on Investment.
Information technology plays a critical role in your overall organization. You rely on your information technology to keep you in communication with your partners, colleagues, and customers while enabling you to complete a range of tasks. Virtually all departments within your organization leverage information technology to some degree – and in many ways, the right information technology can make a world of difference when it comes to streamlining time-consuming processes, improving collaboration amongst team members, and overall, helping you remain profitable and successful.
Business Technology Planning Helps You Align Your Technology with Your Overall Business Strategy to Alleviate Challenges and Reach Organizational Objectives.
Now that the end of the year is coming, it’s time to start your business technology planning for 2020. Here’s a handy end-of-year checklist to help you avoid budgeting challenges and conflicting priorities that slow your execution time down and lower your return on investment:
- Do You Need a Faster Wireless Internet Connection? First and foremost, evaluate your wireless network to ensure it’s as fast and reliable as you need it to be. A lot of hardware, software, and other equipment relies on your Internet connection so make sure it’s up-to-par for the best possible environment.
- Do You Need to Upgrade Any Hardware That’s Soon-to-Be Unsupported? Next, it’s time to take a look at your hardware and equipment. Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008, for instance, are unsupported come January 14, 2020. This means they will no longer receive security patches and updates to stay secure.
- Do You Need to Invest in New Software Programs? Software has come a long way – offering features and capabilities for virtually all areas of the business. You can leverage software programs to make your workflows and processes much more efficient, including accounting, marketing, human resources, word processing, and more.
- Do You Have a Data Backup and Business Continuity Plan in Place? Every business needs a data backup and business continuity plan wherein data is backed up in two places: an onsite appliance and the cloud. This ensures recoverability in the event of a disaster that takes down the network and/or destroys important information.
- Do You Need to Look at Another Website and/or Email Provider? If your website is constantly going slowly or crashing, your company’s reputation will take a hit. The same goes for your email as prospective and current customers expect a quick response in today’s hyper-competitive, highly responsive marketplace.
- Do You Employ a Multi-Layered Approach to Cybersecurity? Take a look at your cybersecurity measures. Do you feel as though you’re protected as much as possible against threats? You should have a multi-layered approach that includes firewalls, anti-virus software, web content filtering, intrusion detection software, and more.
- Do You Need to Reduce the Cost of Your Phone Bill? Traditional business telephone services can be quite costly, but VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) can significantly reduce the cost by as much as 50% as you’re able to make and receive calls over the Internet while leveraging enterprise-grade features.
- Do You Have a Trusted Technology Partner Managing Your Environment? Lastly, after you’ve reviewed all of the individual pieces of your infrastructure, it’s time to think about whether or not you have a trusted technology partner to manage it. This is especially important if you do need to make changes in the upcoming year.
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