ATSG Blog
Resolve to make your business organization more productive and secure by leveraging and improving your information technologies.
Here are some suggestions for executives and business owners to jump start their business with cost effective information technology projects.
1. Develop an Information Technology Plan. Focus technology investments to empower your people to accomplish business goals. Start by talking to your people. Find out how you can make information more timely, accessible and useable.
a. What information is critical to daily activities?
b. What information is needed to improve teamwork, quality, or customer service?
c. How can your people communicate more effectively?
d. What bottlenecks and roadblocks are hampering their efforts?
e. What would be the impact to their job if the computer was down for an extended period of time?
Learn more about technology planning and project management by visiting www.atsgi.com.
2. Identify and prioritize significant opportunities to improve performance in communications and information processing. For example:
a. Implement a company intranet where employees and customers can retrieve and post information such as price lists, product sheets, RFPs, bids, change orders, policies, procedures, news, and other shared information.
b. Update your web site and allow customers to submit service or quote requests online.
c. Empower people in the field by providing capabilities to capture information and transmit updates using wireless smartphones or tablet PCs.
d. Implement upgrades to company wide applications such as service management and billing.
e. Leverage your existing Microsoft Office applications to automate workflows, improve document management and employee collaboration.
f. Hire a professional technology services firm to perform a comprehensive network assessment and recommend improvements.
g. Engage a managed network services provider to keep your network performance and availability high.
h. Consider hosted services to obtain more robust applications without incurring upfront costs of in-house software network infrastructure investments.
Learn more about Managed Services, Microsoft solutions, wireless applications and hosting services by visiting www.atsgi.com.3. Make your computer network and business operations more reliable.
a. Do you need to improve network performance and reliability, or replace older out-of-date servers?
i. VMware® virtual servers may be the best way to improve application reliability and to minimize the cost of hardware upgrades.
ii. NeverFail™ solutions will reduce exposure of critical applications outages and unplanned hardware and network outages.
b. Have you thought about what might happen if your offices and computing facility were to become unavailable due to a storm, fire or vandalism?
i. Do you have a disaster recovery plan for continuing operations?
ii. Is your data backed up?
iii. Do you have an alternative computing facility?
iv. Have you tested your recovery plan?
Visit www.atsgi.com to learn about VMware, NeverFail as well as disaster contingency and business continuity preparedness.
4. Make sure sensitive information on your computers and networks is secure.
a. Are your firewalls, virus protection, and spam filters adequate?
b. Do you have appropriate authentication, access and encryption policies in place?
c. Is your business facility secure?
An expert technologies services provider will help you review your information security policies and infrastructure. Visit www.atsgi.com for more information.
5. Engage an information technology services provider for guidance and advice. Find a qualified managed services provider who will meet your needs by providing the right kind of service, in the right amount, at the right time. Your provider should:
a. Help you plan technology changes and improvements to support your business goals.
b. Work with your existing technical staff by supplementing their capabilities and skills and helping them become more productive.
c. Work with other technology vendors and experts as necessary to provide a complete solution for your business needs.
d. Have partnerships and certifications with leading technology companies such as Dell, HP, Microsoft, Cisco, VMware, NeverFail, BlackBerry and others.
Learn more about the full range of comprehensive information technology services available for your businesses by visiting www.atsgi.com.