IT Strategy Reviews (Video)
In this video, Roland Carter from PCG explains the company’s IT strategy review. He outlines how PCG uses the ITSR to create a plan to improve and streamline their clients’ technology and workflows.
At PCG, we pride ourselves on leading the industry with our unique approach to technology. We don’t just want to be your IT company. We want to be your business partner and help you be successful. One of the ways we do this is through our IT strategy review, or ITSR. We have multiple parts to this process. We have our business discussion, which helps us understand your current needs and any upcoming changes, which may be growth, location changes or compliance needs, but also technology.
During our initial assessments, we will perform a net admin review. This focuses on the current state of your environment. We’ll review warranties, equipment ages, security status, and capacity for growth. All of this will be put together in a useful format to digest and help make better decisions because you’ll be better informed. The engineers that work with your systems on a regular basis will be brought into the conversation to provide expertise and knowledge of your environment that we’ll use to guide us with recommendations that may be technical or process related. We don’t always need to put a new product in place. Sometimes we can talk about a better workflow that only requires a little training or call with a vendor. We never want you to invest in something. We can make what you already have work better.
Our team will next look at our current documentation. We want to make sure it’s up to date and complete. We have many systems in place that help us know what’s in your environment and we’ll have these to ensure we also have proper access and knowledge. Anything we find missing is researched and promptly entered. If we come across something unknown that we’re just not sure about, this is added to our list of discussion items so we can sort out next steps.
Now, we have all of this information. Where does it live? We asked ourselves the very same question. This is why we decided to work with a system that helps us retain information that’s useful for our meeting. The VCIO toolbox is a powerful system that sends out business review questionnaires to you and records the responses. It holds recommendations, projects, asset lists, and creates tickets within our primary system. The end result is a cohesive document that shows your responses attached to some of our recommendations where possible. It shows a timeline of projects and when they make sense for your timing and budget.
It also shows a budget for the next six months, one year or even further. We put all of this information together to provide a comprehensive view of what technology looks like for your business. The meeting to go over all of these items will be scheduled in advance to allow everyone time to discover and think about the important items we would like to discuss. During our meeting, it’s your time to let us know what we can do to help you succeed. To some, this may be need for networking changes, but it also may look like discussion about your hiring process or website development. We want to hear about some of your pain points so we can work with you to provide our knowledge and experiences. PCG is truly here to help in all aspects of your business. We value our clients and are here to work with you through it all.
