When you find yourself working around or against your technology rather than with it, you may feel pressured into purchasing new IT solutions. Throwing out all your current technologies and replacing them with new ones can be expensive. An IT audit can help you identify what’s working and what’s not so you make smart choices when upgrading or replacing hardware, software, and apps. By customizing the tools you already have, you can optimize your processes and save money in the long run.
Creating Your IT Audit
An IT audit is a comprehensive look at all of your hardware, software, and applications and how well they align with your operations and your business goals. The first step is to determine the objective of your audit. Are you hoping to uncover and update old and obsolete hardware? Discover and replace siloed technologies that don’t communicate with one another? Combine several separate tools into a single dashboard? Update your security to keep your data safe?
Whatever your objectives are, use them to evaluate every piece of technology you use for your business, from your network infrastructure to your project management application. Determine if each tool aligns with your current operations as well as your business goals.
Interpreting Your Audit Results
Once you’ve completed your audit, it is time to analyze and interpret the results. You may have uncovered a few obsolete technologies that need to be replaced. But it is more likely that you found tools that you are underutilizing or could reconfigure to serve you better.
Instead of tossing these tools out and adopting new ones, customize them. Reconfigure settings, reorganize hardware, and restructure file systems to align them with your goals. By investing a little time in customizing the tools you already have, you’ll save money and time in the long run.
Bring in the Pros
IT audits can be time-consuming. It can be difficult to know if it’s time to upgrade or if you are better off sticking with a current tool. The experts at Jurrens & Associates has decades of experience partnering with businesses to help them make their technologies work for them. For expert help, contact the Jurrens team today.