Key aspects to consider when developing an IT Strategy

"Must do" projects – deal with anything that might "kill" the business, e.g. Y2K, changes in legislation such as the Data Protection Act etc.

IT staff - finding, retaining and training qualified personnel - IT is changing so fast that keeping your technical IT staff up to date can be very costly in both money and time – investment decisions need to consider not only the initial outlay but also the on-going cost of IT management (The Gartner Group estimate that admin and management costs represent 78% of the cost of network ownership.) Consider the benefits of a "relationship based outsourcing arrangement"

• Sharing resources, e.g. printers, shared files, databases
• Communication, e.g e-mail; document management, tracking, version control, arranging schedules and viewing calendars
• Management, e.g. backups; upgrades of applications; virus checking

• Remote access by you and your staff to your network from a remote site, e.g. home, hotels, customer’s premises
• Internet access, e.g. researching for information; ordering supplies and materials; publishing your own Web site; customer access to track the progress of their order; selling your products and services

• Internal –the majority of all security breaches are by disgruntled internal staff – set out a clear and simple security policy, making sure everyone knows and understands it
• External – restricting your staff’s access to specific types of Web sites; virus protection; backup; ensure only authorised people access your information from remote sites - use IT management tools and implement a simple security policy

• Reliable -.e.g. does your information need to be available at all times?
• Accessible, e.g. does your information need to be accessed from anywhere at any time?
• Usable, e.g. what solutions will be flexible and powerful enough but are still easy to use?
• Growth, e.g. do you need the flexibility to grow by one employee at a time?

Making IT work for small business