Why Strong IT Maintenance is More Important Than Ever

Just as preventative health maintenance is a proactive way to avoid more dire illness, IT maintenance serves to reduce your overall exposure to risk. Strong IT maintenance seals up gaps in your security, offers additional productivity tools, and creates opportunities for innovation. Improving your IT maintenance begins with a simple question: how fit is your IT?

How “Fit” is Your IT?

It’s difficult for an organization to assess its own IT fitness. Internal IT teams are often so focused on putting out fires and day-to-day operations that they can’t assess whether their maintenance is falling out of their control. Internal IT teams may also get used to a certain level of dysfunction; they may get used to skipping certain processes or avoiding specific issues entirely.

All of this creates a need for an external IT audit. Fitness checks have to be done from the outside to determine whether the current IT team is getting the right support, whether business processes are being followed, and whether the company has room for improvement. An IT fitness check, like a financial audit, can give a business ideas as to which areas they can streamline and improve their operations, in addition to assessing the company’s current risk factors.

IT fitness checks are also able to factor in issues like regulations and compliance. It can be difficult for internal IT teams to stay up-to-date with these issues, as they often don’t have the time necessary to do the appropriate research. Nevertheless, it’s incredibly important, as a business can face significant fines, penalties, and legal consequences for not following the appropriate compliance issues.

Why Strong IT Maintenance is Important

IT maintenance improves upon nearly every aspect of an organization’s operations, from the top down. On a broad scope, maintaining IT effectively is important for three reasons:

• Efficiency. When your organization’s systems are working properly, and the right tools are being utilized, productivity surges. Your employees are empowered to get their job done without having to fight with their own tools. Poor IT maintenance stalls progress, leaving employees to try to resolve their own technical issues.
• Ease of use. When systems are integrated seamlessly, employees are able to move from one tool or application to another with ease. This is exceptionally important for elements such as communication solutions. A consolidated communication solution makes it a trivial process for employees to collaborate and connect.
• Security. Just about every business could stand to do better when it comes to cybersecurity. Finding cybersecurity specialists can be tricky, however, and selecting new security solutions can be tricky if you don’t know what the current holes are in your security. Even basic IT maintenance that impacts security, such as updating software, can be challenging for small and/or busy teams.

These are only the three most important aspects of IT maintenance. There are a number of other improvements which any organization can benefit from.

If your organization’s IT department often finds itself concentrating on putting out fires rather than making improvements, it may be time to perform an IT fitness check. It’s always a good time to assess your IT fitness and identify areas for improvement. Contact Red River today!