5 Best IT Management Changes You Can Make

There’s always room for improvement when it comes to IT management. Technology changes every day. Each company is different, but in general we all face the same problem of how to make IT more efficient. Here are 5 best IT management changes you can make. Right now, making at least one change could make to improve the performance and efficiency of your IT department.

1. Policies

How you handle the policy of allowing employees to use their own hardware (laptops, smart-phones) to access your company’s data is an important decision. If you enforce strict lock-downs, and require that employees only access company resources through company hardware, you’ll have safer controls. On the other hand, restricting how your employees can access information will make it more difficult for them to work for you.

The more open your access policies, the more easily they’ll be able to integrate their work emails and messages into their own lives, spending more time working on your projects, and less time being disconnected from it all. Consider allowing employees to access their work computer through a virtual desktop either on a laptop, tablet, or home PC. Strike a good balance between security and allowing your people to use hardware they’re comfortable with.

2. User Training

Training is an up-front expense. It’s hard to pitch it to the CFO or anyone else watching the bottom line, but it can pay off in the long-term. If your employees are stumped by what “Incorrect Password” means, or turn the computer monitor off and on again to ‘restart’ their computer, you may be spending a lot more resources on service calls, and eating up your IT department’s time.

3. IT Training

By the same token, your IT could use some training, or mandates on how it should behave. Do you want an IT department that looks to the computers’ security first and foremost, or one that focuses on the end-user experience? Deciding your priorities and setting policies for these will go a long way to smoothing the support experience for your company.

4. Virtualize

If you have a number of different servers, think about paring them down. Virtualization allows you to run multiple servers as logical instances on a single, high-powered server. These instances can be added or removed as needed, allowing a great deal of flexibility in your computing environment. Consider the maintenance costs saved by consolidating multiple servers into one.

5. Managed Services

Depending on the size of your company, outsouring your IT department could be the best way to save money while still having a full time IT staff.

Most small businesses either do not have an IT department or using the resources of a current employee (or family member) who does not have the training or certification to make crucial IT decisions. Managed services are often times 50% cheaper than hiring a full-time IT employee and also eliminate the burden of sick time and benefits. If you are a larger organization who has an IT staff but needs additional help, having a managed service through an outsourced IT management company can help compliment your current staff without having to hire a full-time employee.

Implementing A IT Management Change

Implementing a IT management change or upgrade of any kind involves a lot of hours of work. Consider carefully where your company can improve, and what kind of problems you face. There’s always some way in which you can improve the function of your business and become more efficient, saving yourself money and headaches.

Mastering IT efficiency can increase revenue and longevity of a company. What are the most productive IT management changes based on your experience? Tell us your tip!

Tags: best IT changes, IT efficiency, IT management, IT policies, IT training, server virtualization, virtual desktops

This entry was posted on Friday, October 7th, 2011 at 3:28 PM and is filed under managed services, management, tablet PC, virtualization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.