For any business owner, growth is a positive indication that you’re on the right track to success, whether it takes the form of increased employee numbers, boosted profits or a presence in new markets. However, being able to anticipate how to scale your business to meet growth demands is tricky. We’ve said before that in this day and age, your IT capabilities and infrastructure are a cornerstone of your business. With this in mind, you need to be prepared to scale IT operations right along with everything else. When planning for your IT needs, there are two major pillars to consider: people and infrastructure.
IT Questions Topic: People
Many companies fail to think about the employee aspect when trying to scale their IT. You can have one of two setups when it comes to IT staff – in-house or outsourced (i.e. a third-party vendor). Each setup has unique benefits, so to determine which is right for you, check out our post about the topic. Here are a few questions you should ask yourself about your IT staff to make sure you have the right setup for scaling.
IT Questions Topic: Infrastructure
Infrastructure is the most common consideration when people are discussing IT scaling issues. It consists of Internet, networking, servers, power management, computers, and business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) software. Infrastructure is going to be unique to each organization. Some businesses have very minimal on-premise needs – such as network and Internet – because everything else is hosted, while others are going to operate 100 percent in-house. These businesses will need multiple redundant Internet providers and BCDR services, and should take into account power considerations to limit the impact and do
downtime of their systems.
Here are the infrastructure questions you need to ask yourself.
These are just a few of the questions we like our prospective clients to ask themselves, and there are certainly other issues that fall outside the above categories, such as:
- What does your security system consist of? Who owns it? What fail safes are in place?
- How long does it take you to get a new employee familiar with your technology stack?
- Can your systems accommodate growth or have they been built for your current needs only?
To put yourself on the right path to successful IT scaling, it’s important to consider the questions outlined above.
Matt Rohler, Director of Operations
Our goal with this blog is to answer the questions you ask! If you have questions about MyITpros or any IT topic, feel free to contact us and we’ll be happy to help. You can also check out our services page for more information on all of our offered services!
