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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 Corporate Technologies,
LLC 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.
Corporate
Technologies, LLC believes better
outcomes are derived from thorough assessments. Call us.
We'd be delighted to
get you started.
Reprinted with permission from DLP
Technologies |