Technology audits can help businesses save money, increase productivity, and enhance cybersecurity.
Businesses, no matter what industry, need to invest in technology in order to remain competitive. This can be a challenge for SMBs simply because they lack the resources to ensure that their technology investments are worth keeping. A technology audit reveals the strengths and weaknesses of the company’s technology framework. In most cases, these are performed by a Managed Services Provider (MSP) like Louisville Geek who will provide an objective outline of your technology and provide recommendations to help your organization meet business objectives.
These free guidance sessions, sometimes held quarterly and referred to as a QBR (for Quarterly Business Review), provide businesses with an opportunity to discuss questions, concerns, issues, challenges, business model adjustments and market changes. Technology reviews should not be simple occasions in which an MSP reviews its performance, brags about myriad computer-generated success metrics or upsells new products and services. No, technology reviews should serve the client’s interests by transparently focusing on the best methods of optimizing technology investments and eliminating any technical issues.
In truth, most technology reviews operate somewhere within the middle of those two extremes. Often a handful of company contacts and an MSP manager and technician meeting together with a basic agenda and no distractions proves most effective. As long as your organization and MSP adjust the meeting’s tenor to match your firm’s needs and temperament, such occasions should prove fruitful. That said, several elements should always be considered during technology reviews:
- Previous goals
- Service satisfaction
- Tickets-per-technology trends
- Productivity improvement opportunities
- Risks
- Costs
- Projects
- New goals
Identifying productivity improvement opportunities is another way forward-thinking MSPs can assist clients. For example, a Louisville Geek client was losing some 40 hours a month manually collecting and processing information from multiple financial reports, such as balance sheets and income statements, from a variety of sources, including their QuickBooks accounting platform, ADP payroll software and Microsoft Dynamics ERP solution. Upon learning of this challenge, a Louisville Geek technician recommended the client use Microsoft Power BI (a program for which their Microsoft 365 subscription already provided access) to automate the data collection and corresponding report production, saving more than 100 hours of labor each quarter.
Exploring corresponding expenses is another important component of an effective technology review. Louisville Geek knows from experience that regularly auditing software licenses and subscriptions can surface recurring savings, as happened when the consultancy explored one customer’s Microsoft 365 account and confirmed the customer could save thousands of dollars a year by eliminating licenses in place for employees who were no longer working for the client. Additional savings were identified when the MSP determined less expensive license packages could meet the needs of several other employees. These expense reductions add up quickly, especially considering Microsoft 365 pricing changed for 2022. Because technology is constantly evolving, opportunities for reducing costs often arise, but you have to remember to look for those opportunities, and a technology review provides just the occasion.
Louisville Geek encourages both clients and organizations having technology questions to schedule such a free technology review. Our experienced team of technicians, engineers and project managers can, similar to a financial review, take a comprehensive look at your firm’s IT investments, evaluate your technology’s status and performance and provide recommendations, should any changes or improvements prove warranted.
