Is this the holiday season or the eye of the storm?
As we err away from the joviality of the summer months and the zenith of the Olympic Games, predictions are for recessive times to come. By evaluating your needs now, you may just protect your business from whatever economic doldrums are on the horizon.
August, for the majority of businesses proves a slightly quieter period every year. This time offers the perfect opportunity to review key areas within your technology infrastructure and its support, ensuring slick transition to the more busy last quarter.
So, as we approach the end of the summer holidays, this article aims to offer proactive, opportune solutions. Here we consider five simple areas that can be reviewed over the coming three weeks, which will add value to your business all year round.
Each Key area has a pair of suggested actions that provide best practice solutions; whatever the season and whatever the economic climate.
Capacity Planning :
- review all profiles and ensure only active profiles remain on the system
- agree maximum mailbox sizes if you haven’t already and implement a policy that is ‘across the board’.
Service Planning :
- review the needs of the business in terms of actual support delivery from either in house teams or partners. Ensure that agreements match the business need
- plan regular service reviews now with your key technology partners.
Network Resilience :
- take time out to conduct a quick overview of your infrastructure, identifying single points of failure. These should include skill sets within your team or your IT partners
- ensure all critical systems are at the latest levels of firmware and software patching or that there is a plan to take them there.
Physical Security :
- ensure all systems are in a secure environment
- review Access Policy.
Utilise your Intranet :
- review and plan what ‘self help’ you could move to your own internal systems
- work with your IT partners to establish what metrics could be published on a regular basis.