Get the Big Picture

Assessing your Information Technology

You are certainly familiar with the Rube Goldberg machine – the delightfully convoluted set of processes required to accomplish a simple task. In the day to day interactions of information technologies, Goldberg is often hard at work. It only takes a tiny disagreement between software codes or a mismatch of operating systems for the marble wobbling down the chute to end up on the floor.

Ideally, you should be evaluating your IT investment initiatives in the context of a comprehensive business strategy that ensures maximum returns and facilitates that all-important "alignment" of IT and business requirements. But the real world too often delivers unrestrained marbles.

It's indicative of the problem that many businesses face as they try to maintain an accurate picture of their assets. When turnover and change of these assets is inevitable and often unmonitored, you lose track of what you own and reduce the efficiencies of the processes they impact.

The business consequences are costly. Companies confront over-and under-buying of assets, lease penalties, expensive off-contract and fragmented procurement, excess maintenance and support, non-compliance with software licenses, regulatory requirements and inadequate ownership cost data for purchasing and planning.

If you don't know what infrastructure items you have, how can you effectively manage your overall IT Service Management? If you don't know how your infrastructure items are related, how can you make changes with confidence knowing your changes won't cause unintended side effects? If you don't know the current state and desired state of infrastructure configurations, how can you be assured that you will achieve guaranteed service levels?

It doesn't matter if you're upgrading, migrating or managing a solution. Before you know where you are going, it's imperative you understand where you are. How?

At itSynergy we offer a series of assessments that provide you a reckoning, of sorts. It's an exact picture of the state of IT at your company. Call it a milepost, benchmark, or a blueprint, if you wish. In short, our assessments provide you a comprehensive view of what's working, what isn't and the actual cost of change. Think of it as a determination how you can get from here to there.

IT Asset Assessment
Our IT Asset Assessment begins with a scan of all your connected IT components, from hardware components to software, using expert tools to get at detailed information on each component.

We initiate an overview of your business operations to ensure that your existing computer system infrastructure meets with your business's operations and scale. We provide a cursory analysis of each department or business function to understand how work flows through your organization.

IT Process Assessment
We invoke best practice standards for how IT should be managed to maximize its efficiency and effectiveness. We will analyze how well you conform to these best practices in the areas of system security, data backup, user rights management, intrusion detection, prevention and a number of others. We also look at how well these IT processes interact with your business to ensure both solutions and infrastructure are keeping up with your specific business requirements.

Business Process Assessment
The Business Process Assessment looks at process work flow components in each department and, when necessary, across the organization. De-constructing process work flow allows the IT function to assist the creation of key performance measures that result from the handoff of discrete work flow components.

If you are going to avoid missteps, miscalculations and the unexpected, it's a good idea to get the big picture. itSynergy believes better outcomes are derived from thorough assessments. Call us. We'd be delighted to get you started.

Reprinted with permission from DLP Technologies