All businesses, irrespective of size, industry or IT budget, will experience some form of disruption one way or another. Every CIO or IT Manager will have their list of priority issues that have the highest impact on operational efficiency. As a trusted advisor to many Australian businesses, we are in a unique position to be part of strategic discussions to minimise risks associated with IT and improve operational efficiency.
Based on our findings, we have compiled a list of the top five issues that impact managers.
#01 Security
With new daily security threats CIOs are increasingly concerned about the monetary damage, business downtime, and other effects. Such is the case of Ransomware which can bring your business to a halt. Ransomware like Wannacry and Petya are becoming far more advanced and sophisticated. CIOs need to constantly ensure their strategy is up to date and multi-tiered to handle these ever-evolving threats.
#02 Compliance
With the emergence of cloud and shadow IT scenarios at their peak, compliance has become a grave concern for most CIOs. For regulated industries such as Healthcare, Government and Banking, compliance around data residency and personal information is heavily scrutinised. Monitoring authorities are much more cautious as they struggle to keep up with the risks around data breaches and ensuring compliance.
#03 Network Downtime
With automation entrenched into businesses and the desire for paperless offices, a strong reliance on IT systems is needed now more than ever. CIOs can no longer be reactive to downtime issues as the impact to productivity is too high and the business will fall behind industry standards. The benchmark is to understand the patterns that can impact network uptime and proactively address these issues before they impact the system users or your customers.
We all know as a customer how it feels when the operator in a contact centre says ‘We are having system or network issues’ or something similar. Obviously, no CIO would want to hear a customer sigh or get irritated due to network or system downtime. In the world of social media in which we currently live, even a single bad experience has the potential to make an irreparable dent to your business reputation.
#04 Hiring and maintaining quality staff
With IT being a consistently changing field, it has become more difficult than ever when it comes to hiring and managing staff. With the ever changing landscape of ransomware and security threats, your staff need to ensure that they can protect your business. With limited budgets and time this can be a reasonable challenge.
#05 System performance
Regardless of the industry you are in, users will put slow system performance in the Chinese water torture category and no IT department wants to be held ultimately responsible for this discussion. Ensuring systems are optimally managed and maintained is one of the key priorities of most IT leaders.
Act to avoid business downtime
Professional Advantage has vast experience in minimising risks associated with the above points that are impacting small to medium sized businesses and we are currently working closely with over 800 organisations nationally. The key is to prepare for these issues before they even happen. By adopting an approach to monitor the overall IT health of your business, you are empowering your IT team to establish control of your systems to make sure you have the right tools in place to quickly act and respond to issues.
If you can relate to the issues on this blog and don’t think you have the capacity to address them, feel free to get in touch with one of our representatives today and we will be more than happy to guide you.
