Who do you call when you need to :
- update your IT usage or data privacy policies
- manage your internal IT staff?
- select new business software, e.g. CRM or financial software?
- accelerate a process or break a business processing log-jam?
Traditionally businesses think of IT in terms of PCs and laptops, servers and the internet. They might include phone services as well, and maybe some software.
But increasingly businesses use much more IT than ever before. Where we used to install software on a computer, we now access many tools though a web browser. Where we used to get servers to host new tools, often now its all online, and there are more tools than ever.
So, its more flexible, but there is a problem
Often, it’s not fully managed. When staff come and go, the management or granting or revoking access to tools can be patchy. This gets worse when the tools aren’t managed centrally, but instead are individual subscriptions. Often online tools may contain data that the business needs to protect, but its unaware of the existence of the tool, let alone the material stored there. A really obvious example is an individual storing business files in their own DropBox or Google account.
We know people have a job to do, and technology is there to help. With IT becoming increasingly reliable, the job ahead of us is to help businesses use it better, and to make better choices. Rather than talking about server life cycles, and expiring warranties, its better to talk about what data you have, where it is and how it can be linked together to automate processes or to provide better insight to support decision making.
Breaking it down for SME’s
Larger businesses can afford to invest in CIOs to have these conversations, but smaller businesses simply can’t justify a full time person in these very expensive, but very important roles. That’s why we’ve broken the workload down into bite-sized chunks and built out a practice to help medium and smaller businesses access the same expertise to the extent that they need.
But my organisation is unique – and so are my needs
We understand that every organisation is unique. What we noticed when we researched this service, we found that there are lots of commonalities across this role in each organisation, but the application will vary. Some organisations will need us to focus on one segment, or more. Some will have specific needs that are generic that sit beyond these core elements. Our portal allows us to size up each of these actions and firm them up as commitments, along with a cadence. For example, this ‘task’ requires us to to do a,b and c. For this organisation it will take ‘x’ hours and we’ll do it ‘y’ times per year. We can add actions that are just for you.
That means we can set out a schedule to ensure the right mix for you, and you can verify that it’s being delivered.
Business as Unusual
ITMaaS is intended to focus on the ongoing hygiene of managing your overall IT. Often, you will also have projects. These will vary in scale and frequency – for example selecting a new piece of software or technology. These projects are then layered on top of the maintenance programme with their own scope and budget, that way you aren’t committing to anything more than you need.
In the same way the cloud gives smaller businesses access to the expensive tools that only the largest organisations used to be able to afford, now our IT Manager as a Service (ITMaaS) brings the same democratisation of services to all organisations.