Top Five IT Improvement Resolutions for 2023

With all the technology around us, it is easy for business owners and managers to be overwhelmed. Business owners usually invest majority of their IT time and investment towards maintaining what they have and not enough toward exploring new technologies that can help their business improve and grow. Commit to identifying:

• • Two areas of your business suffering due to poor IT investment
  • Two areas that present opportunities to innovate your service delivery that could help you win new business, increase customer retention and improve your bottom line.

Then assign staff to research and experiment with new technologies or business and mobile apps to address these four areas of concern and opportunity.

Your network design impacts staff productivity and the costs for maintaining your IT. While keeping tabs on your IT performance and assets should be an ongoing activity, make 2022 the year you conduct a thorough review to identify improvements. Key goals of the review can be to:

• • Identify unnecessary equipment that is consuming resources to maintain.
  • Identify and develop a plan for upgrades that can improve stability and security.
  • Develop a strategy to reduce network maintenance, which can include utilizing cloud infrastructure, replacing problematic business applications or implementing network monitoring solutions.
  • Explore other options that allow you and your team the flexibility to work from the office and from home.

If you have in-house IT resource, we recommend you hire an IT consulting company to offer a third party perspective. Otherwise contact your IT consulting company, or hire a company, and schedule a review. And make sure to review and act on recommendations.

Staff training and development is a budget line item that’s often reduced or chopped altogether. Plan to invest in IT training. If you have new staff they may be:

• • Unfamiliar with the business applications your company uses
  • Unfamiliar with newly adopted technologies that staff need to use proficiently
  • Potential risk to business information with poor internet safety practices

If any of these apply then schedule training sessions.

Employees who are most familiar with your system can train other staff or pay for training from a third party service.

If you have in-house IT resources, provide a professional development budget so they can upgrade skills and stay on top of new technologies.

As many people are using laptops and personal devices it is a very good idea to review if this introduces new vulnerabilities for security breaches or potential data loss.

If you have been wise enough to create a backup and disaster recovery plan, commit to updating your plan and conducting regular testing to ensure it works smoothly, in the case of an emergency. Conduct a security tests to ensure it is working smoothly and work out any issues that are identified. 

A poor disaster recovery effort can harm a company’s business reputation and profitability for the long term. You want to have confidence your plan protects you and your business before any emergency happens.

If you don’t have a plan, prioritize getting one in place.

We’ve created a great post for readers on 7 Practical Steps to Improve IT Security. Read more for full detail, but here is a bullet list of the 7 steps plus some additional steps for working remotely:

1. 1. Install security software and keep it updated
   2. Utilize monitoring
   3. Only use business class equipment
   4. Conduct penetration testing
   5. Properly manage employee mobile devices
   6. Put in place policies and procedures
   7. Hold a 1-hour staff IT security lunch and learn

Plus:

• • If staff are using personal equipment:
    • Install security software on their devices to protect your business information
    • Have the personal computer reviewed for viruses and malware
  • Use secure VPN access for remote users
  • Review your data storage plan and know where your files are stored whether on your network or in the cloud

If you have in-house IT resource, we recommend you hire an IT security consultant who specializes in staying on top of IT security best practices and can offer a third-party perspective on what your business needs to change to improve security levels.

Or contact your existing IT security consultant to schedule a review and help you build a plan. And make sure to act on their recommendations.