Stop Haphazard Spending: Get An IT Management Plan

3 seemingly dull sounding words stop haphazard spending and runaway budgets: IT management plan.

Few IT support partners are prepared to offer an IT management plan, so few businesses realize the potential benefits.

If you don’t already have a plan, here’s what you’re missing out on.

How IT Management Plans Stop Haphazard Tech Spending

Right now, you might spend on IT only when you call the help desk because something broke. Or you’ve made sporadic investments in different cybersecurity tools. Neither approach is the best way to spend your IT dollars.

Instead, your IT outsourced provider should focus on projects and tasks that drive your business forward in a meaningful way.

1. Prioritize your spend to address high-priority, high-reward initiatives

There 3 ways to identify high-priority, high-reward investments:

1. Technology-focused risk assessments

2. Industry best practices

3. Your business plan

1. Technology-focused risk assessments

Servers and hardware fail. Cybercriminals exploit known security gaps. These are incidents you can plan for and prevent with a risk assessment.

Our assessments deliver clear-cut action items

Your risk assessment isn’t helpful if it’s filled with jargon or gives you an endless list of expensive to-dos.

itSynergy risk assessments present prioritized results in plain English so you know where to direct your efforts for the next 12 months.

Not all action items require you to purchase new products or services.

Sometimes you only need to reconfigure what you already have to mitigate a risk.

2. Standards alignment

Aligning your business with industry standard best practices is a prudent business move. It shows clients, vendors, partners and future customers that you are trustworthy and stay on top of the developments in your industry.

Using established best practices and/or regulations as a baseline, we evaluate your business and IT environment. Like a risk assessment, the results are actionable and may not require additional investments.

3. Your business plans

Every aspect of your business ties back to technology – even when the connection isn’t immediately apparent. Take moving offices as an example. It’s not as straightforward as taking equipment from one location to another. You’ll want to run through an entire checklist, including items like testing your network and checking configurations.

Once you have your priorities, you’ll tie them to high-level objectives.

2. Hold your IT expert accountable for high-level objectives

Which of these sounds better to you?

Option 1

Your IT provider spends 30 minutes every month running through the number of support tickets they’ve closed and the average response time.

Option 2

All meetings with your IT consultant are targeted and focus on strategic objectives. You get updates about projects that directly correspond to your business goals. If there are any roadblocks, they’re addressed in real-time.

We bet you chose option 2

Option 1 is tactical. Option 2 is strategic and a better way to spend your time. Yes, you want to know that your IT partner is successfully resolving problems, but you don’t need to talk about it.

How to select objectives for your IT provider

• Turn the high-priority, high-reward initiatives you discover through assessments and talking through your business into the objectives for your IT provider
• Give them 3 to 5 initiatives to work on in a 12-month period
• Tie each back to a business goal
• Review progress in strategy sessions

This keeps everyone focused on business results, not how many tickets they closed last year.

What an IT Management Plan Looks Like in Action

Here’s a condensed overview of what our SynergySafe Process looks like in action:

Step 1 of the risk assessment points out that your BYOD policy created security gaps

After comparing your operations to others in the industry, you realize that competitors all provide laptops to remote and hybrid workers.

You want to expand into new territories this year and have hiring needs

To attract top talent for your new offices and mitigate risks with existing users you and your strategic IT partner set out a plan for purchasing laptops and empowering employees to recognize cybersecurity threats.

In review meetings, you hear about the

• Deployment of new devices
• Security enhancements to remote access to protect files
• Progress on setting up cybersecurity training for all employees

Zero budget surprises

Communication is key to every step of the SynergySafe process – especially around IT investments. We never lob surprises to clients during a meeting. Everything is discussed in detail, well in advance of anyone signing a check. In fact, when it comes time to pay, we hope they’re telling us “yeah, yeah I know you’ve told me a million times.”

Why Didn’t I Do This 10 Years Ago? – What Clients Say About IT Management Plans

Around 6 months into an IT management plan our clients consistently have the same reaction: Why didn’t I do this 10 years ago?

You could wait a decade too

Or you could be intentional about running your business and set up an IT management plan today.

Be Intentional About Running Your Business

Get an IT Management Plan