IT budgeting starts with planning, which is why it is usually tied into our Strategic Alignment services and IT Roadmap , or into a Virtual CIO bundle. The goal is to tie IT spending to company strategy. The first step is to divide your Technology budget into a few key categories: • Run: These are the costs to run your day-to-day IT systems and applications, and to support your users. For instance: Costs for computer purchases, server hardware and software refreshes, and day-to-day support costs. • Grow: These are costs to support expected growth and change in your company, or which can help support sales or marketing initiatives. In the beginning, these types of initiatives are often necessary to ‘fix’ pre-existing problems. For instance: An upgraded virtual server or cloud environment that allows for growth or less likelihood of outages; an upgraded firewall to reduce security risks; a new website that makes it easier to interact with potential customers. • Transform: These are costs to support strategic initiatives or research and development, for instance new products or entirely new marketing strategies; or changes to company workflow that dramatically increase productivity. For instance: A new database and data visualization system that allows for a new client-facing product; a Customer Relationship Management system that integrates with your Website and allows for full tracking of the sales process from lead to followup to quote to sales; New integration or automation systems that could dramatically improve company productivity. White Mountain can help with the entire process, we start off by looking at your current IT systems and budget, in order to put together the ‘Run’ portion of the budget. We’ll review whether it makes sense to move your company to a Managed Services plan for your day-to-day IT service and support. Instead of traditional Time and Materials pricing, these plans provide support under a flat-rate contract. This helps transfer business risks to your IT provider, and gives them incentive to work proactively to reduce IT problems, since problems come out of their bottom line, rather than yours Next, we use the information we gathered in the Strategic Alignment process to put together a list of Grow and Transform initiatives that mesh with your company’s Business Strategy. We also prioritize these projects based on Business Goals. Then, we go through a process to scope these projects to in order to get estimated costs, so we can compare these costs against expected gains or potential risks being mitigated. Finally, we can come up with an approved IT Roadmap for the year ahead, tied to expected quarterly costs from the approved services and projects. With certain virtual CIO plans, we also tie these single-year plans to multi-year budgets, and help you monitor your IT spending as we go to ensure that run-rates match your expected budget over time. At the end of the day, you need to make the best use of your company resources, and to match Technology investments to what is most important for your busines. Using the budgeting process to help meet that goal is just like turning on your headlights. Happy driving! Planning & Consulting Virtual CIO Services Strategic Alignment Budgeting IT Road-Map Business Continuity Workflow Analysis Professional IT Management Service and Support Management Project Management Standard Operating Procedures IT Policies Systems Documentation Technology […]
Attracting top talent can prove challenging, especially when your budget is limited and your industry is competitive. However, onboarding a talented employee versus a mediocre worker makes for a world of difference. Therefore, it?s worth it to take extra measures in order to attract top talent. Here are four tips to help your business onboard the talented workers you need to succeed. Offer BenefitsWhen it comes to attracting prospective employees, this is undoubtedly one of the most effective tactics. While this may seem like a pain at first (after all, nobody wants to deal with sifting through piles of underqualified candidate applications), it is actually greatly to your benefit, as the more potential employees you attract, the larger your search pool from which to select the best candidate for the job. Promising significant pay and/or cash bonuses for signing on can help you secure a new employee promptly, reducing the time it takes to introduce a new member to your staff. These benefits don?t necessarily have to be strictly financial, either. An offer of flexible work hours or plenty of opportunities for career enhancement and education can also be very effective motivators for a prospective employee to accept a position. Challenge ThemHard workers tend to relish a challenge that tests their abilities. Try including a difficult problem to solve that?s challenging enough to attract the caliber of worker you?re seeking, into the application process itself. This approach has the double-benefit of drawing in the caliber of talent you want, as well as setting a minimum standard that applicants must reach to be considered, consolidating your applicants to only viable candidates. Idealize the Workplace Let?s face it, you could onboard all the talent you want, but if highly-demanded talent isn?t given a positively-charged workplace, there is nothing to stop them from going out and finding one elsewhere. Emphasize the strengths of your business as you work to onboard new employees, and offer prospects the chance to acquaint themselves with your business as they begin the interview process. For prospects looking to leave their current position, hold these orientations after regular business hours and to speak with your current employees, if possible. If a current employee is happy with their position, they will very likely have a lot of good to share with a prospect about the office working experience. Provide the Latest TechnologyIn a recent study of Millennial workers (who will make up the majority of the workforce by 2020), it was discovered that 42 percent will seriously consider leaving a job if the latest technologies are not provided. In order for your business to attract and retain young talent, you?ll need to show potential workers that you?re serious about technology. For example, an office where workers can use their own mobile devices is a big draw for potential employees who are attached to their personal devices. White Mountain IT Services can assist you with implementing an attractive and secure Bring Your Own Device policy, as well as recommending the latest technologies that talented workers crave. By raising the bar for the quality of employees you onboard, you will see the overall quality of everything your business does improve as well. Better yet, if a talented worker lands at your company, then they?re not working for the competition! Is there anything special your business […]
Let me tell you a sure-fire way to make sure your company’s technology fails to deliver. Don’t have a conversation with your technology provider about where you see your company in the next year, next 2 years… what your business goals are or what your plans are for growth (or scale-back). Don’t discuss business initiatives, or how you might use technology to streamline, enhance or automate those initiatives. Don’t discuss your marketing or sales strategies, don’t discuss your business workflow, don’t discuss business risks, don’t discuss business continuity strategies, and don’t discuss private data you have that could leave you open to regulatory issues if it were stolen. In other words – don’t align your technology with your business strategy. How does this lead to failure? Let me count the ways: • You won’t be taking advantage of the competitive advantage that technology can provide. The technology landscape is constantly changing. Your IT provider should be aware of these changes, and able to help you use technology to its best advantage; they should be able to think ahead and give you ideas where your technology should be able to give even more value. For instance, we had a manufacturing client that was collecting quality data post-production. As we planned some of their systems, we made sure that the data collection systems we installed could support streaming data from their production systems. This meant that when they were ready, they could take advantage of in-line quality data collection – and tie this into production systems to ensure quality problems were addressed as the product was being made. • You won’t be taking advantage of expert knowledge. If you go to the doctor, and don’t tell her that your chest hurts and you are short of breath; you can hardly complain that she should have known of your impending heart attack. If your IT provider knows that you plan to expand marketing, they can make recommendations or work with you to make sure that you have systems to help take those expensive marketing leads and turn them into hard sales. • You won’t be aware of the risks you are taking. For instance, we had one client who had no idea that the files they were receiving from a vendor had extremely sensitive healthcare information, and that this data was very poorly protected. They had inadvertently opened themselves up to massive financial and business relationship risks that they were completely unaware of. • Your plumbing will be inadequate, and more expensive. If your IT provider knows what is coming, they can help you right-size your hardware or cloud systems. They can plan for expansion, or be aware that they don’t need to worry about adding new employees for the next 10 months. That way you don’t overspend or find yourself surprised by an overly-expensive unbudgeted expansion that could have been factored into the environment. For instance, we understood from one client that they would be opening their new shared chip modeling software environment up to future clients as a service. As a result, we were able to right-size their storage ahead of time, rather than needing to add much more expensive and disruptive expansion space later. Making sure your technology and your technology company is onboard with your vision of your Company’s […]
The reasoning is simple; there are situations that, like it or not, are beyond your control. You alone can?t stop your office from being flooded by a freak rainstorm. You can?t always prevent a sudden and unexpected hardware failure from bringing down mission-critical systems. You can rebuild your office after an earthquake, but the data that?s lost from the catastrophe can?t be recovered without the help of a data backup system. Plus, user error is a leading cause of data loss, but no matter how many times you explain best practices, someone is bound to make a mistake sooner or later. So, what can you do to keep your data safe? The obvious answer is data backup and disaster recovery, but it?s not as simple as that. Some traditional backup solutions aren?t as effective as businesses would like them to be. One of the most common data backup tactics is tape backup, which stores your organization?s data on magnetic tape reels that are deployed in a time of need. While this method of data backup and disaster recovery was once the standard, it?s no longer the most efficient way of storing and recovering your critical data assets. In short, tape backup has the shortcomings of being both user-intensive and time-consuming; two ill-suited traits for a business that needs to think on its feet in the event of a disaster. Furthermore, tape backups are resource-heavy and often must be performed after-hours, and if someone forgets to set the tape, you could lose out on a whole day?s worth of data. If you want to ensure the continued survival of your data, look for the following traits in a data backup and disaster recovery solution: Frequent backups: Unlike tape backups, which are typically performed once at the end of the workday, you want a solution that lets you take backups as often as every 15 minutes. This helps to minimize the amount of data lost due to unexpected technical hiccups. Off-site backup storage: If you store your data backups in-house or on your company network, you?ll likely lose them, along with all of your other data, if an event were to cause its destruction. Therefore, you want to store your data in a secure, off-site location, and in the cloud for anywhere access. A fast recovery time: You don?t want to be waiting around while waiting for your data to be redeployed to your entire infrastructure. With BDR, you can be back in action almost instantaneously. The BDR device acts as a server while you work towards replacing it. If your business wants to fully leverage a modern data backup solution, you should invest in a Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR) solution from White Mountain IT Services. Our solution provides you the dynamic and reliable data backup and recovery services you need in order to ensure the survival of your business?s infrastructure. Not only can you take multiple backups of your business?s data throughout the day, but you can also recover your data within a moment?s notice, all by taking advantage of the cloud. Is your business still using antiquated data backup solutions? If so, call us today at (603) 889-0800. We?d be happy to show you how much easier it can be to protect your data using a BDR solution.
