Given the increasingly strong emphasis on the internet in today’s society, it is no surprise that businesses should be putting more focus and investment in digital systems. Although this sounds blindingly obvious, the IT challenges facing companies are evolving quickly, and continued stability cannot be taken for granted.
For instance, the recent global pandemic has forced many businesses to adapt to hybrid or fully remote working practices. Although this sounds like an easy change in theory – simply allowing employees to work on their laptops – the reality is incredibly complex.
To allow your team to work at home or remotely in a public location, you need to ensure your IT systems are fully equipped and secure enough to handle the additional risk that this poses. A simple example that highlights this threat is if an employee works from a cafe. They may be accessing sensitive company documents on an unsafe internet connection, with cyber threats ready to pounce.
What’s more, the employee may not have proper antivirus software on their computer, which puts your entire infrastructure at risk. From this example, you can appreciate the importance of overhauling your IT systems, but when is the right time? This is what you need to know:
When you suffer regular logjams in productivity
One of the most pertinent times to overhaul your company’s IT systems is when you start to suffer from regular logjams in productivity within the business. If your team is consistently missing targets due to slow operating systems, faulty devices, or corrupted data, then it is likely time for you to examine what is going wrong with your IT systems. In this scenario, it is advisable to diagnose the problem logically, examining each element of a system to find the offending component rather than tearing the whole system apart.
For example, you may find the underlying infrastructure is the problem in certain cases. In this scenario, you should swap your existing structure out for a more efficient alternative like microservices. Click here if you are wondering what are microservices.
When your business is laid bare to cyber threats
Another pressing reason why you might need to overhaul your IT systems is if your business is under fire from cyber threats. There is no doubt that cybercrimes are on the rise, with many attackers targeting businesses with weak IT systems.
You do not need us to tell you how damaging these cyber threats can be, so you must regularly improve your IT systems to combat these threats.
Whether you need to overhaul your staff cybersecurity training practices, build a stronger data storage procedure or completely transform the entire internal IT system, leaving yourself exposed to cyber threats is not an option.
When you are trying to grow your company
If you are trying to expand your business quickly, then you might find that your IT systems are slowing you down considerably. This is often the case for businesses who built their IT infrastructure when they were just starting out as a solopreneur venture but have rapidly scaled and now need their IT systems to cope with masses more data and network activity.
