Engaging with a third-party managed IT services firm for an IT health check or assessment is one of the smartest things a business can do in today’s technology-centered world.
An IT audit involves a comprehensive evaluation of an entire IT infrastructure. This typically includes physical infrastructure, strategies, systems, networks, and devices.
Taking proactive steps toward building a technology roadmap tailored to a manufacturing organization is imperative.
Modernizing processes, hardware, and software alongside networks can lead to greater efficiencies and increased productivity, enabling businesses to gain a competitive edge.
The article below explores why a manufacturing business should invest in a thorough IT assessment.
- Strengths and Weaknesses of Existing Infrastructure: First and foremost, a comprehensive IT assessment is essential to gaining a solid baseline understanding of the current performance of your IT infrastructure and network. It is impossible to strategically plan and forecast for a proper technology roadmap without understanding current performance levels. Similarly, this technology assessment is complete, well-performing infrastructure elements can take a later evolution and upgrade date on the roadmap.
- Cost Optimization: Once the assessment has been completed and the results analyzed, your dedicated Infinity support team will be able to identify any system redundancies or cost savings that can be realized. This is important as any initial efficiencies mean companies can distribute their OPEX costs into other critical areas.
- Cyber Security: Unfortunately, cyber security should be every company’s top priority. Hackers, phishers, and malware scams are getting increasingly more intelligent and are targeting businesses more than ever. An IT security risk assessment can gather information regarding system weaknesses at risk of critical data breaches or cyberattacks. Once any possible vulnerabilities have been identified during the risk assessment process, your IT partner can assist in a remediation and upgrade plan to ensure your company does not fall prey to hacking.
- Compliance and Regulatory Guidelines: Like most industries, manufacturing businesses must adhere to industry regulations. An in-depth information technology assessment of company practices ensures that your business complies with data management and storage regulations to avoid costly fines or possible legal issues. Every day in the US, companies are forced to report data-related cyber attacks on large, well-established businesses. Data breaches like these can lead to class-action lawsuits if critical data is not stored or transferred correctly. A simple cyber housekeeping issue could lead to an enormous loss of revenue, which is entirely avoidable.
- Scale and Growth: Growth is a fascinating time for businesses, but often, the last thing considered is the impact growth might have on IT infrastructure and the existing networks. The information technology assessment process is the perfect time to discuss the current growth trajectory and its implications on current infrastructure; additionally, following the evaluation, the steps needed to plan for future expansions and capacity enhancements can be put in place.
- Streamlining Operations and Cost: Every business is concerned with “doing more with less,” to do so, operational performance must be analyzed to understand where production can be streamlined, where efficiencies can be found and enhanced, and overall where downtimes can be reduced.
- Enhanced Productivity: Nothing is worse for an employee than IT infrastructure that doesn’t keep up or cannot support a normal workload. Businesses lose hours of staff productivity as they wait for system updates or slow networks. Staff productivity will increase with access to an updated and efficient network.
- Disaster Recovery Plan: Unfortunately, emergencies arise, and it is always best to be prepared beforehand! If COVID-19 verified anything, it is how essential manufacturing and processing industries are to everyday life. In cases of natural disasters or massive system failures, it is necessary to have a disaster recovery emergency relief plan in place to ensure that operations can resume as quickly as possible.
- Industry Trends and Competitive Advantage: Leveraging and utilizing all emerging technologies is essential to ensure your business maintains a competitive advantage in an ever-evolving tech-driven world. Investing in innovative infrastructure may give your business a competitive advantage over competitors, leading to greater success.
- ROI and Long-Term Planning: Although one of the last reasons listed here – this is one of the most logical and vital. A deep drive to evaluate the effectiveness of an infrastructure is essential to understand the depth of current issues to plan to scale for future upgrades and expansions. IT Projects can be ranked and prioritized alongside long-term company growth strategies based on their ROI potential. Some IT departments plan for five years of growth at a time.
In conclusion, it is good practice for IT experts and leaders to invest in a baseline comprehensive IT assessment of all infrastructure and networks.
This is excellent for tenured professionals and leaders new to their roles and company. Accurate information is essential to address existing weaknesses and plan for the future technology roadmap.
Book a discovery call with one of our experts today, and they will walk you through the process of a thorough IT assessment and how we can address the findings together.
Once the comprehensive results are in hand, a dedicated team of IT professionals will start working on the proposal of how you can best address immediate issues and plan for the future.
