Business growth is an exciting phase of entrepreneurship, but, without proper planning, IT and technology can become a major setback. To give your business the competitive edge, developing a scalable IT roadmap ensures that your systems and networks will support expansion, not hinder it.
Let’s dive in and give you the practical steps on how to build this roadmap:
1. Start with a Technology Baseline Assessment
Before planning, know what you own. This is as simple as inventorying all hardware, software, warranties, subscriptions, and configurations. Simple fixes, like acquiring some more mice and keyboards, might be easy and can be done as your business grows. Others, such as data being stored only on local devices, might be inviting failure and end up blocking growth.
A Quick Tip: Diagrams can be very helpful. Making a diagram or outline of networks and potential user counts will help your business model future growth and bearable load.
2. Align Technology with Business Goals
Your business’ roadmap should link technology investments with business objectives, such as hiring plans, new product or service launches, geographic expansion, or customer experience improvements.
A Quick Tip: Keep these goals S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely). This will help you identify which needs to come first, and how to build each one off the next.
3. Build Out a Hardware Lifecycle Plan
Every piece of equipment your business utilizes and purchases has a lifespan. Setting replacement dates for when hardware will need to be replaced not only will help your business proactively budget for expenses, but it also avoids inevitable slowdowns and security breaches that will come with age and bloat.
A Quick Tip: Consider lease or refresh programs for certain technology to ease the cash-flow on your business.
4. Standardize Tools and Processes
Nothing will undermine business growth and development like multiple processes and operations being done on multiple different platforms (M365 and Google Workspace). By setting consistent tools and processes such as operating systems, browsers, productivity tools, and security agents, technology headaches between staff and departments will be eased and security will be tighter.
A Quick Tip: Review each employee and system within your business or organization to see what everyone currently uses and find out where standardization should occur.
5. Plan for Scalable Security and Backups
As your business grows, your attack surface and data volume also increases. Pretending that threats don’t exist or won’t come after your business only leaves the door more open for successful attacks that steal important data (or completely erase it).
Scale your business’ security controls as you grow through key security features such as multi-factor authentication (MFA) on all accounts, advanced endpoint detection and response (EDR), and consistent backup protocols and procedures. All of these tools should be tested and implemented now so as your business grows, there’s a consistent plan and roadmap to follow.
A Quick Tip: Schedule quarterly reviews to adjust the plan based on growth metrics of your business.
6. Train, Train, Train Your Employees!
Your team is only as strong as its weakest link. If your employees don’t know how to use the technology you’ve provided for them, then it will be more of a hinderance than a helpful tool. Additionally, on the security side of your business, if your employees are not trained to spot phishing attempts or malware, then even the most robust security defenses are significantly weakened.
Build training milestones and goals for new hires and onboards to learn the systems your business utilizes. On top of that, make sure you have built-in cybersecurity training for employees and a detailed response plan if there is an incident.
A Quick Tip: If you don’t have a current Managed Service Provider or an in-house IT team, find a seasoned IT professional or IT consulting firm to build and conduct at least one training for your team on cybersecurity and basic technology tools and usage. This will be much easier on you and your leadership team.
Need some help getting started on this roadmap? We here at Marvel IT Services have helped many small to medium-sized businesses in Pennsylvania and New Jersey begin to make technology a predictable growth engine. Give us a call and we can help your business do the same!
