Why is it so important that you conduct an IT audit every year?

It comes as no surprise that when it comes to technology and systems these can very quickly become outdated. So, what do you do to ensure that you can keep your technologies up to date and up to scratch in order to maintain your competitive edge? 

In our latest blog article, we will outline why it is so important for your IT provider to conduct an IT audit on your IT systems every year. 

An annual IT systems audit should have a set date booked which can easily work round your day-to-day business operations. The best time to complete this audit is the point at which your business usually sees a drop in the overall levels of business for example at Christmas or in January. 

Furthermore, this enables your business to schedule upgrades and projects to take place during quieter hours which will help to minimise the overall disruption to the business. 

What does a typical IT audit consist of and what benefits will your business gain from conducting one? Let’s take a look at the following: 

Age of equipment 

It is important for any business to make sure that they have a full inventory for all the IT equipment that the business uses, this should be as comprehensive as possible with model numbers, manufacturer and the warranty status included. 

The types of IT equipment that should be noted includes desktops, laptops as well as servers which tend to have a working lifecycle of between 3 and 5 years or better still consider moving to the Cloud. 

Maintaining the accuracy of this inventory with the crucial details enables your business & dedicated IT provider to schedule upgrades. Furthermore, it will allow you to prioritise upgrades on equipment by age through the use of the inventory list. 

Automation 

As well as the above, the audit should provide a list of the manual tasks or main problems within your business. 

Could this manual, time consuming & labour intensive task be automated? In terms of complexity, it can be as easy as duplicate data input by an employee. 

You could be using multiple systems whereby the same data needs to be added, why not make life simpler by getting data to be added in one go! Better still, perhaps it's worth consolidating your data into a single ERP system such as Business Central or a single CRM system such as Dynamics 365 / CRM instead. 

It goes without saying that the work environment has changed so much that automation is becoming more and more common as well as services being used such as Microsoft Power Automate to allow businesses to simplify the way they work and to become more efficient. 

Disaster Recovery Testing 

You will find that insurance providers are now offering “Cyber Insurance” critical insurance that businesses who have suffered from a cyber-attack will look to put to the top of their list when it comes to renewals. 

However, most people don’t know that cyber insurance requires a comprehensive disaster recovery plan in place to answer such questions like “how long will it take your business to recover” and “when was the last time your disaster recovery was tested?”. 

This demonstrates that this will need to be tested on a yearly basis which should be under the remit of any IT audit that takes place. 

Next Steps? 

If you are looking to find out more information on how we can help your business through a comprehensive and thorough IT audit of your current IT and tech then get in touch with our team of IT experts today to discuss your specific requirements. 

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