As a small or medium business begins to create and develop their IT environment, it can be challenging to decide which resources to focus on first and how to build a roadmap for the future. A business’ IT network keeps sensitive information safe, but it also helps to facilitate coordination and cooperation between team members as they do work and interact with clients. This means how your business builds out its IT infrastructure will impact every single employee in the company, and that’s why we’ve put together three key strategies to implement into your IT planning process.
Starting with the IT Essentials
It can be tempting to implement new and fancy security tools into your IT environment right away because the technology available to companies is impressive and useful. However, a small business should prioritize the essentials first, and that means focusing on strong security. Setting up the right tools like multifactor authentication and endpoint protection will both secure your network and allow for safer scaling as your business progresses. If you add new and complicated tools right away, then it may become more difficult to fully secure your network later, so always prioritize network safety first.
Maximize Value
Once your network is secure and ready to go, then it’s time to focus on the bells and whistles. Resources, such as the cloud, have huge cost saving potential and can raise employee productivity considerably, but this will only work if your IT environment maximizes the value of each tool you implement. Whether its new laptops or cloud services, build your network according to the needs of your employees and clients because the best technology on the market isn’t helpful if the people using it don’t find it useful. Every tool and service you implement should provide maximum value to the people who use it.
Simplify Your IT Environment
As a business’ IT environment grows, its IT infrastructure should never sacrifice simplicity. A network that is too complicated not only frustrates workers and makes onboarding new hires more difficult, but it also creates more potential attack vectors for malicious actors to take advantage of. Outdated software and services should be replaced with new ones, and new tools should work together to make their use and monitoring seamless and easy. Your IT staff should not have to log into multiple portals to access information about your network, and employees should not use multiple services that do not work well together. Simplicity in your IT environment translates to ease of use and safe scalability in the long run.
Summary
Building out your small or medium business’ IT environment can be a complicated and daunting task, but it does not have to be. If you prioritize security first, maximize employee value from tools, and keep simplicity always in mind, then your IT network will make your company more productive and allow you to focus on the work that keeps your clients happy. As your business grows and requires more tools and services, you can also keep Robinett Consulting in mind for your IT consultation needs. We know that sometimes all a small business needs is a bit of advice or the right tool to really shine, so contact us whenever you have IT needs.
