How to optimize resources and ensure efficient IT governance?

We live in a time when companies face an enormous challenge, ensuring an efficient management of contracted resources, while maintaining an up-to-date and secure infrastructure.

Over the years, the IT department has increasingly played a leading role in companies, a key part of business continuity.

However, if on the one hand the importance of the IT department increases, on the other hand, the responsibilities are increasing even more. And knowing how to reconcile with all this is not an easy task, on the contrary, it is very difficult.

Not to mention the fact that the demands related to the optimization of resources, and consequently, in cost reduction, is becoming increasingly eminent in the corporate world.

With that in mind, how to optimize resources and provide efficient IT governance?

OPTIMIZING RESOURCES

It is about this topic that we will address in this article.

First, let’s take a look at some events that have considerably elevated the role of the IT department in recent years:

Growth of current technologies 

The insertion of new technologies in the current context, increases the companies’ needs for the IT technical team. Not only for a technical positioning, but also for providing a strategic vision on how such technology could be applied according to the existing infrastructure, aiming to meet the company’s business strategy. 

Covid-19 pandemic 

The pandemic meant that the IT team had to, in a very short period of time, gather all the necessary efforts, so that employees could work from their respective homes, without compromising the security and quality of work. 

Increase in the number of cyberattacks

The considerable growth in cyber-attacks lately has meant that many companies have had to reassess their security infrastructure completely. More and more new attacks are taking proportion, and this makes the technical team need to be always alert and monitoring.

In short, the IT team needs constantly to face the following challenges: keep the infrastructure up to date, reduce unnecessary costs, increase information security, meet business requirements and constantly support users.

Undoubtedly, we can therefore conclude that the IT department has an essential and indispensable role for the continuity of any company’s business.

In this way, let’s look at some topics related to an efficient IT governance, which are part of the current conjuncture of companies regarding technological management:

IT GOVERNANCE

Information security policy

This is the main topic, and the others should be contained in it. The information security policy is essential, as it will guide all actions related to the use of company tools, as well as the responsibilities of each employee. 

In this context, each employee must access the company’s services only on devices approved for this purpose, and any other access from third-party devices must be restricted. 

Such approved devices must also be described in the document that evidences the company’s Information Security Policy. Furthermore, in this document, they should contain answers to several questions, such as:

Which applications can I use, and which ones I am not entitled to use?

How can I access the company’s services and with what credentials?

In which directories should corporate files be stored?

Cost Control 

In a corporate environment, it becomes very difficult to perform an efficient cost control using only manual means. 

In addition to taking considerable time from an employee who could be performing other important activities, manual analysis is undoubtedly subject to considerable errors, and does not keep up with updates in real time. 

For this reason, it is crucial that your company has tools that assist in cost control, and allow the identification of information related to such as, for example:

How much is each department of the company consuming in telephony and data?

Is it necessary to use all existing data links?

What applications are users using that consume the most data?

Asset management 

It is essential that the IT technical team has a management of all devices that are being used by users. In this aspect, it is necessary to use policies that define rules and access privileges for each employee according to their profile. With that in mind, let’s see some points that need to be included:

How many and which corporate devices are employees currently using?

Are the devices updated in their respective versions?

Is there a current solution that allows you to view in real time the devices that are being used?

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

As we have seen throughout this article, the current technological needs, added to the challenges of maintaining an efficient governance, generate a very high demand on the IT technical teams of any company.

Technology evolves very quickly and keeping up with it is certainly a great challenge for all companies in our current scenario. Clients are increasingly demanding new functionalities and resources, and meeting such demands requires constant monitoring between the areas involved in the company, as well as planning.

Efficient planning must pay attention to meeting the company’s commercial and strategic needs, however, it must undoubtedly include all the necessary elements to ensure appropriate technological management.

In this sense, there are no doubts about the importance of investing in network management. In this manner, it is perceptible that these good practices bring not only benefits for the visibility of the infrastructure, but also a way of guaranteeing crucial information for the governance of the network.

Thinking about it,  Telcomanager, leader in Latin America in the sector of software for network management, since 2002 in the market with a unique and innovative methodology, makes available smart solutions for the monitoring of data for providing complete visibility to the infrastructure of the client, allowing your Company to accompany the main aspects of your network.

Posted on 03/11/2022