How To Stop Thinking About Your IT (The Right Way)

The more you have to think about your IT, the less it’s doing its job. Like most business owners and executives, you have a lot of areas demanding your attention. You have employees to lead, customers to serve, and products and services to deliver. Unless you’re an IT company, you probably didn’t go into business to spend your time thinking about (or fighting with) the technology that supports your organization.

You need your technology to just work. Every time.

Your organization needs you to focus on the things only you can focus on. So we put together a list of ways to streamline your organization's technology so you can focus on doing what only you can do.

Some of the items here require some upfront effort and others need regular check-ins. At the end, you’ll be able to:

• Reduce the time you spend putting out IT fires
• Reduce the impact IT failures or extenuating circumstances have on your organization
• Increase your organization's productivity by maximizing your technology

If you feel stuck on how to accomplish some of these, or if you want to skip the checklist altogether, we’re here to help. We went into the IT business specifically so you don’t have to. Talk to an expert and we’ll show you how we can help.

Let’s dive in.

1. Choose the right tools

You would never try to cut down a tree with a butter knife. Or swat a fly with a baseball bat. The IT landscape is obviously much more complex and confusing than cutting down trees or eliminating pests, which makes it easy to end up in this scenario. When choosing the technology, platforms, software, and apps to support your organization, there are some common pitfalls to avoid and good questions to ask.

Common pitfalls

Don’t choose a tool or software simply because:

• “Everyone is using it”: Your organization is unique. Your technology should fit the specific needs and limitations of your organization, not conform to what everyone else is using.
• It ranked at the top of a Google search: While search engine rankings can help identify popular tools, it speaks more to their SEO efforts (or advertising budget) than to how well the tool will support your organization.
• It’s the cheapest (or the most expensive): While cost is a large factor in choosing your technology, it shouldn’t be the only (or even the primary) factor. The most expensive options aren’t automatically the best and the least expensive options may end up costing you more in the long run.

2. Know when to update & upgrade

Knowing when to update existing systems or upgrade technology can be a bit like Goldilocks finding the right bed to sleep in. Let’s start with defining the differences between updating and upgrading.

Updating vs upgrading

Updating generally involves bringing current systems, software, applications, and technology up to current standards. This can be as simple as downloading and installing a new version of an application or as complex as implementing security patches in your network.

Upgrading, on the other hand, usually involves replacing a piece of technology with a different, more suitable option. While this can often mean a newer piece of technology, the emphasis here should always be on “more suitable”. A brand new sports car is no help if you need an earthmover.

Indicators to watch for

Some common signs can tell you when updating or upgrading is needed:

• Slowness: While we don’t think about it often, technology actually ages. After years of use, tools get slower and need to be replaced. This can be due to physical components wearing down or the increasing requirements of newer technologies and software exceeding old standards. Watch for long application load times, slow bootup cycles, stalled downloads, or frozen software.
• Compatibility: Hardware, firmware, software, network layers, and more all work together to accomplish various tasks. If one of these pieces is lagging behind the others, it can cause failures across all of them. The effects can range from minor inconveniences like slow connectivity to major catastrophes such as data loss or stopping operations.
• Security: This is a tricky one as security gaps are usually not as noticeable until something major has gone wrong. A strong cybersecurity strategy ensures you know when there are gaps that need to be filled.

Questions to ask before updating or upgrading

• Who is affected?: Is the problem isolated to a specific person or department? Do the problems only surface with internal tools or are they exacerbated by third-party integrations or individuals? If we update or upgrade this piece of technology, how do we minimize the impact or downtime and maximize the return for the affected parties?
• What is the source?: Is it a software issue? Outdated hardware? Network configuration? Narrowing down the root cause of the issues you’re experiencing saves you from shooting in the dark and spending unnecessary time and money attempting to solve an issue.
• When do we update or upgrade?: Are there certain times of the day, week, or month that this technology is used more or less? Are there strategic gaps between projects or initiatives that reduce the impact of potential downtime or transition time? Are there seasons where this technology might be less expensive to purchase?
• Where do we get updates and upgrades?: This is where it’s helpful to have a guide who knows the ins and outs of your organization to recommend updates and upgrades you know will serve you well. Additionally, always ensure you’re installing updates from trusted sources and purchasing technology from reliable vendors.
• How often should we update/upgrade?: Because every organization and the technology they use is different, the answer to this is different for everyone. As a general rule, you want to update as soon as you can do so without causing interoperability issues, and you want to upgrade before old systems cost you more time and effort than new ones.

P.S. These are some of the exact things we fully manage for you with our managed IT services.

3. Lock it down

The ultimate purpose of your organization's IT infrastructure is to support the people who make your organization run. That infrastructure needs to be as simple and as accessible as possible to those who need it. The key phrase is “those who need it”.

Outside of natural disasters, most IT problems are caused by people. Those causes can be simple, honest mistakes or they can be malicious and intentional. Either way, the first step to preventing them is proper security and access management.

Pave the communication highways

Communication is the key to your organization's success. And we don’t say that lightly. The manner, speed, and ease with which your teams, customers, and systems accurately share information can make or break your organization.

While running any organization involves uncharted territory and forging new roads, it’s critical to prioritize methods of communication. Here are a few areas of opportunity to explore leveraging technology:

Train you team

While technology may be the supporting backbone of your organization, your employees are the lifeblood. Organizations wouldn’t happen without them. It’s critically important to manage the intersection of your employees and the technology they use. Inadequate training can lead to honest, yet catastrophic, mistakes at worst or frustrated employees and high turnover at best.

Consider the adage of a CFO asking the CEO, “What happens if we spend money training our people and then they leave?” To which the CEO wisely replies, “What happens if we don’t and they stay?” 

Invest in your people and they’ll invest in your vision.

Here are some areas to consider increasing, creating, or paying for training to set your employees up for success.

Best practices

The ways in which a piece of technology can be used is as broad as the number of companies using it. Establish clear practices on how your company does and doesn't use various systems or applications. They may have experience with tools you use, but the ways in which they previously used them may be different.

P.S. Their way may be better than your current way so be open-minded!

Digital safety & cybersecurity

Ensure current employees and new hires are fully trained on digital security practices like password management, multi-factor authentication, PCI compliance, etc. Data breaches and vulnerabilities are often the result of inadvertent or careless habits.

Industry or software certifications
Courses that teach employees proper use and best practices of the tools they use are easy to come by. They’re often inexpensive and are a good investment in an employee’s resume. Topics for these include things like word processing, spreadsheets, accounting, and more.

In-house apprentice programs

Technical and complicated industries can be difficult to convey everything a team member needs to know in written or classroom form. Connect teachable employees with skilled members of your team to learn the nuances of your industry firsthand.

Cross training

Redundancy is a good thing when it comes to having people who can perform various tasks in your organization. Cross training (even minimally) can save your organization if a key staff member is unavailable unexpectedly. It also creates human connections between team members and departments that result in more collaborative work.

How VC3 Can Help 

Having read this far, it’s obvious there is a lot of foresight that goes into developing an IT infrastructure that requires little to no effort to maintain. The good news is that done properly, these things drastically improve your peace of mind both now and when something goes sideways.

We help organizations implement the things in this list every day. We love to do it, and we’re great at it (if we do say so ourselves). If you have the time and know-how to take on implementing the things we talked about here, that’s amazing. If not, we’re here to help with any and all of it. We want you to be able to focus on what’s most important to your organization. Let’s talk.