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IT Assessments – What? Why? And How Much?
What is an IT Assessment?
An IT Assessment is a service that helps you with an easy-to-understand detailed review of your existing tech environment. With your IT Assessment in hand, you’ll have a clearer picture of where your tech environment is at Today and what you need to do to get your tech right.
Keep your organization running smoothly with regular IT assessments, and determine how technology helps or hinders your success before making any decisions about improving, expanding, or changing it. DelCor consultants understand your business, operations, and culture. They’ll translate technical issues and jargon—from network infrastructure to system requirements and restraints—while providing pragmatic recommendations for using IT to meet your goals and improve operational efficiency.
Understanding IT Assessments
Ultimately, the goal of an IT assessment is to optimize and create efficient IT systems in order to decrease costs, reduce risk, and improve governance and security. In the simplest sense, it provides verification on what is and what isn’t working.
A productive IT assessment should provide insight into important questions, such as:
The Process
Reasons to Undertake an IT Assessment
The constant change intrinsically associated with technology forces even the most tech-savvy, cutting-edge organizations to consistently evaluate advancements in the context of their current IT environment and larger organizational goals.
Furthermore, deficiencies often exist despite best efforts to mitigate risk. An effective assessment should define what is working well and what is simply not working with insight as to why.
For instance, if an assessment reveals that an organization has two accounting applications, the assessor should question why there are two applications instead of simply providing an inventory. Based on the findings, a recommendation can then be provided on how to move forward.
In addition to providing a health check of the organization, IT assessments can help organizations uncover whether or not IT is helping move the organization forward and if IT is appropriately spending, as well as provide insight into the innovation or lack thereof within the IT department.
What to Expect Following an IT Assessment
Before undergoing an IT assessment, it is important to recognize that, upon the conclusion of an assessment, action will need to be taken. As a result, the SOKOTEK team has found that performing an assessment during or immediately prior to budgeting season enables organizations to effectively plan for the year.
Although the actions needed following an assessment vary from one organization to another, areas for improvement, SOKOTEK commonly finds during the course of an assessment include failure to plan for disaster recovery, back-up failures, security deficiencies, misconfigurations due to staffing or experience issues, and hardware failures unreported due to minimal monitoring.
How to Ensure You Select the Right Provider
Before undergoing an IT assessment, ensure you find and select the best provider for you. Consider asking the assessor the following questions:
SOKOTEK IT Assessments
Over the years, the SOKOTEK business technology team has conducted IT assessments for organizations ranging from small and mid-sized businesses to enterprise-level organizations across various industries. This experience has allowed SOKOTEK to build a comprehensive IT assessment methodology.
SOKOTEK employs objective and quantitative tools (e.g. standards SOP’s, vulnerability scans, etc.) as well as conducts quantitative analysis (e.g. discussions with key personnel to understand technology pain points as well as organizational goals). In combination, this information enables the team to make meaningful suggestions. The end result is a roadmap to IT success that prioritizes actionable recommendations based on need, cost, and impact to the organization.
With a SOKOTEK IT assessment, you get:
Technology Assessment Presentation
- A Technology Assessment Presentation detailing the current state, maturity and impact rating analysis, positive practices, key recommendations, and recommended action plans.
Detailed Network Documentation
- Detailed network documentation including network diagrams, asset diagrams, and hardware and application mapping.
Prioritized Master Findings List
- A Prioritized Master Findings List with every finding sorted by category, maturity, and business impact.
Customized Deliverables
- Other relevant deliverables such as vulnerability scans, tech budget analysis, data availability assessment, staffing review and training, or security frameworks.
Key Benefits of an IT Assessment?
- An IT assessment lets you know where you stand.
- An IT assessment gives you a clear picture of what needs to be worked on.
- An IT assessment empowers you with information to help you make better decisions.
Why do I need one?
- It’s a good practice to check to ensure that all aspects of your tech are running well regularly. Just like having a CPA review your finances or having an annual check-up with your primary care doctor, it’s essential to know where you’re IT is at regularly.