We imagine you’ve taken time out to plan for the coming 12 months. You’ve probably set goals relating to the turnover you’d like to achieve, where this business is going to come from and what products and services your customers need.
You may have looked at your staffing requirements and the skills they need so that you have a great team to help you achieve your goals.
What about your IT requirements?
One area that is frequently overlooked and just as important are your IT plans. Your IT infrastructure and its on-going ‘health’ is an important part of supporting your business and the plans for the year.
To help you review your IT requirements and plan for the coming year, we’ve put together a list of questions.
Firstly, what has occurred during the last 12 months?
IT Review of last 12 months
- Was your IT budget appropriate for the year?
- How frequently did you experience IT issues?
- What were these issues? Grade them from 1 – 5 in terms of minor to major.
- Were they easily resolved or did you need to spend IT budget for the resolution?
- How much down time did you experience?
- What was the impact of any IT disruption to your customers?
- Do your staff have the IT tools they need to do their job efficiently?
- Did you renew any hardware or update your software?
- Were your systems backed up daily and if you needed to revert to a backup was it available?
- How often did you need to contact your IT support company?
- How prompt was their response and did they resolve the issue quickly and to your satisfaction?
- Do you feel as though you received value for money from your IT support company?
Next, how will your business plans impact on your IT systems and requirements for the coming year?
IT Plan for coming 12 months
- Do you need to increase your IT budget and if so by how much?
- Will you be recruiting and need to buy additional PCs or laptops?
- What server software do you run?
- Are you aware that MS Server 2003 and Windows XP are no longer be maintained with security updates?
- If you plan to increase your business or introduce new products and services, will your current IT systems cope?
- Is your antivirus cover up to date and sufficient to protect your IT systems?
- If your backup has been manual up to now is it time to look at an automated backup procedure?
- Are you taking full advantage of the benefits that cloud services offer?
- Has your IT support contract reflected the IT help you needed?
- Would a different payment structure that better reflects your IT support needs provide you with a more cost effective solution and make your IT budget go further?
We’ve put a lot of thought into this last point.
Our objective is to provide a range of IT support packages that offer great value for money. One problem we regularly come across is that companies are tied into an annual contract which doesn’t really reflect their IT needs.
That is why we introduced TLP Support Points. This package:
- Avoids costly contracts and long term commitments
- You only pay for what you use
- Benefit from discounted labour charges
- TLP Support Point customers pay less per hour than non-contract customers, meaning you get the best value when you need IT Support
- Affordable and scalable
- Whether you have 2 staff or 100, you will find TLP Support Points can provide the support for your IT requirements allowing your IT spend to grow with your 2018 plans.
Free IT Review
To find out how your IT budget could go further and ensure that you have an IT system that meets your needs for the coming year call us on 01737 824 003 or email us to arrange a meeting.
