- IT is a powerful tool, but it's easy to fall behind and find yourself with a system that doesn't work for you
- Between security and productivity, businesses should maintain and sharpen their IT tools
- Companies must be aware of the oft-neglected final steps in a deployment process
If you read our previous post on how CIO Advisory can drastically increase the power of your IT department to drive the business forward, you’re probably ready to learn more about harnessing the modern IT landscape for the betterment of your business.
Good IT is more than just a solid email system, reliable accounting software, and meeting scheduling. Even the most analog of businesses have the potential to bring IT on board to simplify processes, automate work, and leave your employees more capable and productive — but it's not something you just buy once. We’ll tackle two examples, then tie them together with the one thing that’s often so sorely missing.
Using IT To Secure Your Business
It’s news to no one that IT has vastly superior security powers than simply locking something behind a door. All the same, security is often far below its most optimized capability. Modern IAM practices like multi-factor authentication is underutilized, and while things like fingerprint recognition are a common part of many users’ lives now, we’re still far from the passwordless future some companies like Microsoft have started talking about.
There’s work to be done in many circumstances blocking up security holes that have always existed – or possibly arisen over time as software updates have moved ahead without you — as well as anticipating new types of attacks and ensuring you’re quickly able to recover from disaster.
You wouldn’t use a toolbox you bought a decade ago that have strained and bent under use, rusted with time, and become eclipsed by more reliable and effective designs. Just because your IT was great when originally deployed doesn’t mean you can get away without staying on top of it.
Staying Ahead of the Technology Curve with Microsoft 365
By now, almost every business has at least one Microsoft Office license kicking around. Whether you’re an international corporation with a robust IT department and thousands of licenses or a family-ran retail establishment, the ability to quickly make Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint documents — and to view those sent to you, is invaluable.
Want to know more about Microsoft 365? Try this Case Study!
Over time, the Office Suite has matured into a spectacular offering that enables even novice users to create well-designed documents at home in any board room or sales meeting that would have previously required an entire team to produce.
Which just means that when you do need a team, the results are even more amazing — not only because there’s less time spent on getting the tedious basics in place, but also because of the powerful collaboration tools now available. Employees can seamlessly work on the same document at the same time without having to worry about conflicting edits that must be collected and realigned later.
The Best IT System Without Training is a Tragic Waste of Resources
An IT system is only as good as it is used. This means that as important as the design and execution of your IT solution is the training. This needs to be a built-in necessity if you want to truly get the most of your IT tools.
If you ran an auto shop, you wouldn’t want your mechanics to leave useful tools on the shelf just because they know how to use the old ones. They’ll work slower, possibly less safely, and will cost the company more than they could be working.
Many users will do the same thing with IT. They may be resistant to change and fail to fully utilize your new IT tools whether because they don’t trust them, don’t want them — or even see them as a threat.
That’s why it’s important to provide training, to show the potential of new IT, and help show users how it makes their work more productive.
For this, it’s best to have an IT partner actually dedicated to your success. At CrucialLogics, we take our projects from conception, to implementation, to training, to support — rather than just dropping technology off and leaving our clients to fend for ourselves. We do it this way because we believe not only that it’s the right way to do it, but the only way to do it.
Looking to sharpen your IT tools and secure your business with the assurance that your employees are fully on-board? Contact us now — or CEOs and other business leaders can learn more here.
