Many companies forget to add the IT into a company’s strategy and planning phases when they first start out in business. There are many reasons that you should include anything that takes significant time and cost into your plans, so we will cover a few here and give some examples that might help you going forward.
Hints:
- Try and match your IT with your business plan timelines i.e. if it’s 3 years then have your IT planned out for 3 years – if it’s 5 then plan for 5.
- Work with a professional business IT company to go through your plan to make sure it’s comprehensive with frequent reviews. You want to make sure you have gone through everything at least few times to make sure you have covered your requirements and concerns.
- Plan your contingencies; rapid growth, relocation or home workers to name a few.
- Stick to the plan whenever possible; our experience is that owners that fail to include IT into their business plan and budget attempt to use hardware and software long past its usefulness, thus costs and outage time can escalate when no support is available driving costs very high indeed.
- Continually evaluate your industry; keep an eye out on your market and see what your main competition are doing. Take the time to continually perform this – the goal is not to be the first one to jump ship but don’t be the last one stuck on the ship either.
Scenario examples:
Hint 1: If you are planning on starting small in a managed office working off a laptop for the first year, then might advise a cloud-based solution with added security. A managed office can be a great starting point, but many do have limitations and restrictions on the data and voice solutions available.
Hint 2: If you are planning on starting with a team right from the off then it is important to think of the hierarchical structure of the information in the company and who/when they will require access to this to include holiday and sickness cover. Many companies enable access then forget to remove it after the user has left or the access is no longer required. Remember the business owner is responsible for the control and access of data and its security.
Hint 3: Initially we would advise you to simply sketch out on large piece of paper how you see the information the company requires and uses will flow and then add a list of the applications that you believe you will use to interact with that data i.e. webstore/website, database, accounts, email, documents and so on. We then create a list and add items like integration, maintenance (yes, most programs do not include maintenance), security add-ons. Yes, even Microsoft Office 365 costs more for the added security and business package, so you end up with a table something like this:
| Software | Input from | Output to | Supplier | Author | Maintenance | Version | SLA
days |
Notes:
|
| Outlook | Office 365 | Archive and Order DB | Microsoft | MS | Subscription | 2016 | 2 | |
| Acme Accounts | Sales DB | Shipping labels | nonamesoftware | ACME | 20% pa in advance | 2.22 | 0 | |
| Labelforsales | Acme Accts | Web(dispatched) | Urownlabels.com | none | 1.17 | 0 | Only works on W10 Pro edition |
Hint 4: Plan for the problems; should the internet go down have a plan. We have a customer that loses power about 4 days a year as they have a generator and an instruction set on how to use it. We have clients that consider email an essential 24-hour requirement, so they have a backup solution to give them virtual around the clock cover. We have clients that invest in backup server solutions that maintain backs at twenty minute intervals 24/7. The point here is to know your risks and determine how you are going to deal with them on each occasion. Knowing these is one thing, however by publishing them and making your staff aware of them, then training your team to deal with them will help you overcome issues quickly.
Hint 5: There probably is nothing worse to a PC user then finding out the business you have joined is asking you to use an old and out of date PC that is so slow you start of being inefficient just from the equipment you have been asked to work with. Remember, once the IT equipment is out of the remit of the plan, dispose of it in the proper manner (ensure the data is wiped and the hardware is disposed of in accordance with the WEE regulations).
If you would like more information on how First Stop IT can help your business plan for the future call us on 0345 450 7876 or use our contact form here.