publish date is October 19, 2017
By: Alexa Strohm

The pace at which technology changes and evolves presents businesses with the ongoing challenge of maintaining an effective, efficient and secure environment while continually planning for “what’s next” in the IT world.
As businesses grow, it happens frequently, that IT can fall behind or simply not know where next to go. Oftentimes, IT is immersed so heavily in the day-to-day operations, there isn’t time or resources or sometimes even expertise, to stop and really dig into future planning.
Additionally, maintaining your technology environment can involve costly capital expenditures, and a misstep in making these purchases can be difficult from which to recover and frankly, can leave behind a painful legacy.
IT assessments provide your organization with a comprehensive examination of your environment and a tangible document that can guide your organization’s planning.
There are several advantages to a third-party technology assessment that can put your organization in a position to control IT before it controls the organization.

Your IT environment has many layers which are built upon each other; Not always in tandem. It frequently happens, for a number of potential reasons, whether it be a change of guard, a lack of skillset, or poor documentation or communication, that there is a lack of understanding about how your IT environment came to be and what it consists of.
If you aren’t technical, and even if you are, sometimes getting a real understanding of your IT operations can be challenging. Third-party technology providers who offer technology assessments are experts at uncovering this information for you. Through the use of tools, tried and true methodologies and frankly, it being their specialty, these providers can get to the crux of the issues more efficiently and effectively.

Technology has the ability to make your organization incredibly efficient. It can bridge communication gaps and facilitate collaboration. It can automate manual and labor intensive processes. It can ensure that in the face of disaster, your business can remain operational.
However, on the flipside, without the right strategy, structure, skillsets, processes, procedures, communication, and equipment, technology can become a cost center and headache. Technology assessments can evaluate how your existing technology environment is helping or hindering your organization.

There are many ways to run your technology environment, but knowing and following best practices ensures that your organization is taking the proper steps to protect your organization in the event of equipment failure, securing your data from threats such as malware, and ensuring that your organization is in a position to support the critical applications needed for your business to function. Third-party technology solution providers are well-versed in these practices and through an assessment, can evaluate your strengths and weaknesses objectively.

Another advantage to a third-party technology assessment is the ability to leverage relationships with vendors fostered by that technology solutions firm. These relationships can provide real value to your organization. Likely, the organization you’ve hired to perform your technology assessment has developed relationships of a breadth and depth unnecessary for organizations whose business isn’t IT. Therefore, you inherit access to a knowledgebase that may likely otherwise not be available.

Founded in 1990, Sophisticated Systems offers customizable technology solutions that fit the needs of our clients.
We are experts at delivering comprehensive assessments that provide critical insight into your technology environment and real value to your organization. Our assessments can maximize your business’ resources through the review of technical, functional, procedural, policy and security-based considerations and present you with a clearly defined document that is tailored specifically to your organization’s needs.