Blog / 3 More Ways To Be Proactive About IT Maintenance

Use feedback and data to plan ahead properly.

While the breakneck pace of technology advancement is a primary reason why it’s important for SMBs to be proactive in your IT maintenance (especially if you don’t have a MSP staying on top of these things for you), it also brings with it ever more advanced and accurate reporting tools for planning ahead and leveraging your technology effectively, and that’s what being proactive is all about; getting ahead of problems before they arise and being properly prepared for the future.

1. Informative Reporting
2. Regular High-Level Reviews
3. Create an Updatable Technology Roadmap

We invite you to take a look back at our previous article about proactive procedures for your IT, for more details. Otherwise, let’s dive right in on three more ways to get ahead of your IT maintenance.

Informative Reporting

In order to be truly proactive, you need knowledge about how your IT is being used. We’re not talking about a network assessment, to be clear. Informative reporting about server usage, logins and cybersecurity events, website traffic and others are all crucially important to being able to track both long term trends and short term aberrations. The exact time scale of your reports will depend on your exact organizational needs, though we recommend monthly and no more than quarterly. You tend to lose granularity of information in reports that could be useful when you wait much longer.

Regular High-Level Reviews

All that reporting has a purpose, and that’s to inform future decisions as best as possible. No one can read the future, but that doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t be strategic about your path forwards. Put all that wonderful report data to use finding better ways to use your IT. Which workflows take the most time or have the most pain points? Where is your bandwidth getting wasted? Can your current technology help solve these problems with minimal costs and disruption, or will you need an upgrade? These and more are all issues you should be considering on a regular basis.

Create an Updatable Technology Roadmap

We humans sometimes obsess over completing projects and meeting deadlines, and while those are unquestionably important to a successful business, it’s not particularly proactive to get caught up in thinking of IT in terms of projects and deadlines. All that data and regular reviewing of key aspects of your IT should be synthesized into an actionable technology roadmap for the future, including hardware upgrades if needed, but remember as soon as one roadmap is finished, the next one needs to get started. Instead, create an ongoing project document for your future IT, one that’s easily updatable and accessible, to get into the habit of thinking of your technology roadmap as an evolving document rather than a repeated series of one-off projects whenever your technology gaps become noticeable.

If you’ve enjoyed learning about proactive IT maintenance, consider following our weekly newsletter to get more IT tips and tricks. When you’re ready to pull the trigger on getting fully proactive managed IT services, contact TRINUS and we’ll be happy to help out.

Sincerely,

The TRINUS Team
trinustech.com