Specific and holistic IT solutions
Typical involvement in strategy falls into a number of areas…
Hardware
- Identifying brands/models/specifications for a medium term commitment
- Considering merits of PCs & Servers built to order versus buying from stock
- Standardisation of inventory resulting in lower cost of ownership; simplification of spares strategy; ease of implementation (ghosts etc); familiarity to users; improved opportunity for support; simpler inventory and asset management; ability to interchange components and increase life
Software
- Standard Office Productivity tools providing improved quality, consistency of output and ease of training
- Continuous monitoring of best-in-breed for most key suites
- Training considerations
Security
- Passwords to be of suitable construction and changed to agreed cycle
- Commitment to log out when away from screen giving improved security and confidentiality.
- Ensuring firewalls are kept up to date and configured to respond to new and growing threats
- Anti-Virus. This is a huge subject. Everyone knows about it, but doesn't believe it will happen to them...
Connectivity/Communications
- Local Area Network. Planning and Building for the future
- Wide Area Network. Assessing solutions that do not lock an organisation into any particular solution for too long. Ensuring that solutions are adequately flexible to adopt new technologies but always being aware of business risk
- Secure Remote Access for external and remote members of an organisations team.
- Internet access
Housekeeping
- File naming conventions
- File storage
- Branding of digital output
- Asset tagging and inventory management
- Reduced user access
Supply Chain
- Identifying superior suppliers
- Identifying and analysing longer term supply relationships
