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Kevin Linsell outlines 5 top IT New Year's resolutions for 2014 and discusses the importance of reviewing the changes your business has gone through in the last year.
Resolution 1: Make time to meet with your Service Provider and articulate your business strategy and vision
This resolution is about making time to meet your Service Provider and allowing them to understand your vision, articulate where your business is going, what you want to do and what you envision happening over the next 6, 12, 18 months and beyond. This will enable your Service Provider to understand that vision and their role in contributing to your future business success.
Resolution 2: Take a fresh look at your suppliers
Take time to review your suppliers and understand if they are a true partner that adds value to your business or just a commodity supplier based on a historical trading relationship. Purchasing decisions are often based on habit, but it’s a really good idea to assess the value that these relationships actually add to your supply chain - if a supplier truly understands your business, they can become a real enabler as you move forward.
Resolution 3: Investigate how buying outcomes rather than technology could benefit your business
Business requirements passed down to the IT department are often approached from a buy-and-build process and perspective, looking at the discrete technology elements that will meet the stated requirement. It’s a good idea to review your requirements from an external perspective, looking to your supplier and partner ecosystem to see whether it’s possible to leverage their specialisms and existing investments to deliver your specific business outcome. This could benefit you in two ways: 1) a faster, more robust solution that meets your requirements and 2) frees your IT department to focus on core business.
Resolution 4: Review your business continuity plans – how they relate to your business today and the future strategy
Businesses change continually and the New Year is a good time to actually take a look back to understand the changes your business has gone through in the last 365 days. Are your Business Continuity plans and DR strategies still able to deliver what is needed for your business in the event of an issue - be that a fire or flood, an actual disaster or even just a travel problem?
Resolution 5: Create and communicate a desktop strategy
Now we are in 2014, many businesses are suddenly realising that they’ve got 4 months left of Windows XP support before Microsoft withdraws this facility for good. Businesses without a considered desktop strategy will be very familiar with the pain of the continual refresh cycle, including hardware, software and other technology solutions. Having a formally documented desktop strategy and articulating that across your workforce allows them to understand company policy on things like Bring Your Own Device, mobility and home working and the opportunities and efficiencies these deliver.
Kevin Linsell
As Head of Service Development Kevin drives Adapts’ position as market leader in Cloud Services and Infrastructure Outsourcing. With over 20 years experience in the industry he delivers the strategy and services roadmap for all product development and the evolution of the Adapt service capability.
Kevin manages all aspects of the productisation of services including internal / external stakeholders, vendors, customers and any 3rd party support / supply chain components.
Kevin began his career as part of the research and development team at BT working on Fibre Optic research and Directory Enabled Networking. He then moved on to become Solutions Director at the company.
More recently Kevin worked as Customer Solutions Architect at Computercentre, where he provided architectural and consultancy expertise across all technologies to a wide range of customers.