Image source : iStock
It seems like everything’s unpredictable today. You say one word that insults a snowflake from across the globe and there goes the cancel culture, trying to ruin everything you’ve worked for. Or you make a slight tweak in one of your products and get rich overnight because that tiny little tweak is exactly what your customers wanted. Or there’s some new tech that’s coming out that will totally reshape how your company works.
You get the picture – things are unstable and everything changes all the time. You can’t be prepared for everything, but there are still things you can do to make sure your business is flexible enough that it can stay competitive in a world that never stays the same.
One of these ways is with proactive IT management that won’t just respond to problems as they come up, but that’ll prevent them from happening in the first place.
4 Key Elements of Proactive IT Management
Why do you need proactive IT management? Because there are consequences of neglecting proactive management and you do not want such consequences to start affecting your work.
- Monitoring Systems/Services in Real-Time
To some, round-the-clock monitoring may seem excessive, but for managing IT concerns as they come up, it’s impossible to do without such an approach. You have to do real-time monitoring at ALL times.
There are no problems until they occur; which might be obvious. But that’s usually the reason why people think 24/7 support isn’t required.
But if an issue (e.g., servers drop) happens at odd hours and support isn’t available, the losses could be devastating for the business (and it’s not just the finances that are affected).
Also, predictive analysis is another important element; it’s about looking at previous data and current systems. It profiles those systems and determines which of them is likely to fail.
Simply put, it can identify challenges before they fully develop/happen, which allows for readiness and some course of action to be taken to avoid them or minimize damage/risk.
All that may sound like too much work, but the good part is that you don’t have to deal with this yourself (or even have an in-house support operation); you can get it done for you (outsource) by third-party providers such as GSI, who offer JD EnterpriseOne support and similar services.
- Keeping the Systems Up to Date
Maintaining your software and hardware on a regular basis is beyond important and it’s another component to proactive IT management. Your systems need to be updated and patched on time to prevent problems that outdated systems can cause.
The importance of these updates in these industries is undeniable, especially if you’re thinking security.
- Creating an Adaptable IT Environment
The IT framework must be flexible, otherwise you won’t be able to manage your business during the changing market dynamics (the market is swift, which means you need to also be swift).
With a flexible system architecture, it’s easy to scale and make adjustments, which are quite critical if you desire to diversify your services, introduce new products, and just want to develop the business.
In fact, it’s possible to install additional software, change hardware, and raise/shift resources without disturbing the work process when the level of the IT infrastructure is high enough – this is the ideal scenario.
Personalization will make it possible for you to design the infrastructure in a particular way that fits your business. As that business changes, the infrastructure will change as well.
- Planning for Emergencies
There are two parts to this – risk management and disaster recovery. Regardless of whether the measures are put in place, there will always be a chance of problems happening; there will always be a risk of possible threats, for instance, cyber-attacks, natural hazards, or even physical infrastructure breakdowns.
This is the reason why you have be prepared and ready (as much as possible). This is not to say you have to live in constant fear and become a Doomsday prepper, but rather have a good recovery plan to ensure you bounce back after such a catastrophe.
“It’s better to be a soldier in a garden, than a gardener in a war.”
Risk management is the identification of the risks associated with any given potential vulnerability and undertaking actions aimed at their minimization, such as having backups in place, enabling multi-factor authentication, and encrypting sensitive data.
Part two, which is the disaster recovery plan, means having a list of steps to take to restore critical operations after disruptions.
Conclusion
In short – proactive IT management will help you prevent problems and adapt to the changes in the market.
In the event that you start thinking that the task feels insurmountable or perhaps too many people will be needed to execute it correctly, there’s way too many things that could go wrong, etc., one of the best ways to do it would be to contact a good provider and let them do all the work for you.
Starting from managing interpretation and translation services all the way to preparedness for the worst-case scenario.
Experts (usually) do it best!
