IT Assessments: One of Your Most Powerful Tools

When we speak with companies for the first time, one activity we always suggest is an IT Assessment. Unless a firm has recently had an assessment—or is so well organized and disciplined that it’s systems and network are always up to date and running at peak condition—an IT Assessment can be an instrumental planning tool.

Yet, some business leaders don’t understand the value of an IT Assessment, or they are worried it will be too disruptive to their business. Others are concerned that the true purpose of the assessment is to sell them expensive upgrades they cannot afford.

If you have refused an offer of an IT Assessment for these or other reasons, and you have never experienced the benefits of an IT assessment, we hope you will read this article. In the rapidly evolving world of technology, firms simply cannot decide where they want to go, and then plan to go there in a cost-effective, practical fashion, until they have had an IT Assessment.

Many companies work with technology every day without any idea of the condition of their IT networks and whether their systems are functioning at an optimal, or even an acceptable level. Most do not fully know what IT assets (hardware and software) are in use. Without this information, a business decision maker cannot possibly prioritize and manage the technology initiatives that minimize downtime, security holes and other operating problems. An IT Assessment provides exactly the insight and visibility that organizations need to gain this knowledge and prepare for a brighter technology future.

As was pointed out in a recent article on IT complexity and reliability (an interesting, if fairly high-level read): “Since it is impossible to avoid failures in IT systems, modern IT operations strive to minimize the impact of failure by increasing the responsiveness of systems (i.e. automatic failover) and people (i.e. incident response) when problems arise.”

There is no better way to start the process of increasing system responsiveness, and to gain beneficial insight into the problems that affect people (and are caused by them), than with an IT Assessment. Best of all, the most proficient Managed IT Service providers can conduct an IT assessment with minimal disruption to the workforce or corporate operations. Much of the information gathering can be handled by running an assessment tool that only collects system and inventory information and does not collect any company data, causing little to no system impact.

Novatech has been providing managed IT support services to small to midsized businesses since 1992. We provide Availability—making sure your network is up and running; Mobility— allowing your employees world-wide access to your network; and Security—as an Internet security company, we resolve “issues” before they grow into problems.  If you want to learn more, please visit Novatech.net