Why Your Business Needs an End-of-Year IT Assessment

Your IT is the backbone of your business, allowing you to do everything from sending emails to holding virtual meetings. You and your employees use your technology extensively throughout the year, which is why it’s important to have a resilient and optimized infrastructure your business can rely on at all times. The key to achieving such an IT environment is to perform regular IT assessments.

What Is an IT Assessment?

An IT assessment, or technology audit, is a comprehensive review of your systems. It involves having an IT expert evaluate your infrastructure and can range from a formal site survey to a full examination of your operational needs and how your technology stacks up. The auditor’s findings are then put in a report that gives you a new level of clarity about the state of your IT.

This process can also find opportunities to boost efficiency, productivity, and profitability. As the analyst inspects your IT, they can offer suggestions on how to make your infrastructure better for your company. The more aligned your IT is with your business objectives, the more you benefit. While you can perform an assessment on your own, it’s best to have someone who can provide an unbiased eye.

The Purpose of an IT Assessment

Has your office been experiencing recurring downtime? Is there an annoying pain point you need to address? Or maybe an application you frequently use is starting to run slowly?

There’s an endless list of things that could inhibit how your business functions. The purpose of a technology audit is to eliminate them. IT audits check your:

Internet connectivity throughout the office
Cybersecurity programs
Software/hardware age
App or equipment redundancy
Technology conflicts
Latency in voice and data apps

IT Audit Objectives

At the end of the day, an IT assessment is meant to improve your business through infrastructure visibility, optimization, and alignment. An audit accomplishes this by setting certain objectives, such as:

Identifying strengths and weaknesses: An audit highlights the best parts of your IT environment as well as what needs improvement.
Early detection: Finding a problem early on can prevent bigger issues down the road, allowing you to avoid costly disruptions.
Compliance: Any systems that fail to meet the compliance standards of your industry can lead to paying avoidable fines.
Clarity: Gaining deeper insight into your infrastructure and its capabilities is necessary to build a successful strategy for the future.

Why Is It Necessary To Have an End-of-Year IT Assessment?

It’s recommended that you visit a dentist twice a year so you can maintain the health of your teeth. An end-of-year IT assessment is beneficial in a similar way. Think about it like this: your infrastructure consists of a variety of technologies. Over the course of the year, inefficiencies can find their way in, be it because updates aren’t installed, certain technology becomes outdated, or some other issue arises.

By scheduling an IT assessment now, your company gets an opportunity to review its systems before the end of the year. With the IT audit methodology, you can discover what’s helping or hindering your business on the IT side so your team can hit the ground running when they come back to the office in the new year.

The Benefits of an End-of-Year IT Assessment

Regardless of the size of your organization or what industry you operate in, every company can benefit from an end-of-year IT assessment. A few benefits that come from an audit include:

Elimination of vulnerabilities: During an IT assessment, the analyst can review your cybersecurity policies and processes. This gives them the chance to find security gaps in your network. Once you know about your organization’s vulnerabilities, you can take measures to counteract them.
Having a baseline: One objective of an IT audit is to establish a baseline of performance. Without a baseline, it would be nearly impossible to know if your infrastructure has improved after making changes.
Understand your IT: The more you understand your infrastructure, the easier it is to improve it. An assessment provides more visibility into your network. This allows better management, which can lead to higher performance and greater cost effectiveness.
Improved Communication: An IT audit often requires help from people across the organization. This opens the door for communication between departments about topics concerning different parts of your business. The more interdepartmental communication there is, the better your organization runs.
Due Diligence: An assessment provides documentation you can share with insurance companies, government regulators, and business partners. So, if your company is hit by a cyberattack, an audit could be used as proof that you did everything required to protect the information in your possession. Without proof, your organization could face legal problems.
Easier Budgeting: Creating a budget for the new year is something every business has to do. However, some things are easier to build a budget around than others if you don’t have the right information. The details in your technology assessment checklist can help you figure out the best course of action for your short- and long-term expense planning.

Schedule Your IT Assessment With The Logic Group

The Logic Group is an industry-leading managed services provider that has been providing IT solutions since 1996. We offer a wide range of services to meet any need, including IT assessments. If you’re interested in improving your company’s infrastructure, schedule an IT assessment with us.