Executive Summary
- To thrive in today’s business world, it’s essential for (most) UK businesses to make the most of their IT infrastructure, whether to support a team in-office, remote, or hybrid.
- To get the best results from your IT, the best option is to plan ahead and be prepared for whatever may come your way. The best way to do this? An IT support roadmap.
- In this article, we’ll explain what an IT support roadmap is, why you should already be using one, and the various different elements which you should include in your own.
Introduction
How far ahead does your business plan its IT investments?
If you’re like many businesses in the UK, it might not be something which receives a lot of focus other than when something goes wrong or just doesn’t work. But, with so many businesses choosing to deploy work-from-home and hybrid working systems, the reliance on robust IT systems is actually greater than ever.
So how can you ensure your IT infrastructure is up to the task – not just today, but weeks, months, and even years down the line?
The answer is the IT support roadmap, and we’re here to tell you all about it.
What is an IT support roadmap?
An IT support roadmap, sometimes known as a hardware / software plan or IT architecture roadmap, is essentially a long-term plan of what your business is hoping to do with its IT infrastructure.
IT roadmaps are focused solely on the internal workings of the business, and have no real bearing on anything customer-facing. That said, it goes without saying that having an effective IT setup will make your business run more efficiently and, in turn, serve your customers better.
IT support roadmaps can include different elements for different companies, as we’ll soon see, but broadly speaking a roadmap should outline key investments in hardware and software, processes around compliance and security, and enhanced strategic capabilities.
Which elements should an effective IT support roadmap include?
Now that you’re familiar with the broad concept of an IT support roadmap, let’s look at the more tactical, practical stuff: what you should actually include on your plan.
Here are the key pillars for an effective IT support roadmap:
- Hardware Provisioning
With more companies than ever going the hybrid route following the pandemic, it’s essential that your IT roadmap includes considerations for hardware. This can be two-fold in terms of your employees: laptops (or desktops, depending on your setup) for new starters, and upgrades for existing employees. Keeping track of your fleet of IT hardware will help you pinpoint when key hardware investments need to be made.
- Software provisioning
This may go without saying after our first point, but you need to consider how you’ll be supporting your hardware with essential software. This may mean email clients, file sharing software, cloud storage apps, digital collaboration tools – funnily enough, everything you get with the Microsoft 365 suite. This is a timely example of the SaaS (Software as a Service) model which allows you to pay for your software – and all updates – via subscription rather than a one-off payment. Naturally, this makes including SaaS subscriptions on your IT roadmap a necessity.
- Compliance and update management
Whether it’s an SSL certificate for your website or a crucial update following a large-scale malware outbreak, you should always have a plan for how you intend to roll out critical security updates to your team and ensure you maintain compliance with cybersecurity best practices. For example, if your team have mobile devices as part of their work – or even use their own – you might choose to enforce an update policy via an MDM system like Microsoft Intune.
- Backup and disaster recovery planning
If the pandemic taught us anything, it’s that you can never be too prepared. When it comes to your IT support roadmap, this means making provisions for backup and disaster recovery. You can learn more about this in our dedicated article, but, in short, you should have a regular backup cadence built in to your roadmap — even for your cloud-based services. This will ensure that your most mission-critical files are always recoverable should the worst happen. In addition, you should always regularly review your RPO (Recovery Point Objective) and RTO (Recovery Time Objective) to ensure they still support the way your business currently operates.
How far in advance should you plan your IT support roadmap?
While every business will want to know how far ahead they should plan their IT support, the truth is that there’s no one-size-fits-all answer here.
Plan really far ahead – like 5 years or more – and you will almost certainly drift from your initial plan at some point. This type of drift is unavoidable when running a business is such a reactive process. When you don’t know what’s around the corner, planning every tiny detail beyond the next 3-6 months becomes very difficult. Take the global pandemic, for example, we’re sure nobody’s IT support roadmaps had that as a possibility.
It’s here that remaining agile and responsive to change comes into play – and it’s an important attribute of any good long-term roadmap. “Best laid plans”, and all that.
Need an IT partner to help on the road ahead?
If creating your own IT support roadmap from scratch sounds a bit daunting, don’t worry – the Get Support team has you covered.
As part of our “IT Director” service, available with all of our IT support agreements, we’ll sit down with you and work out a point-by-point IT roadmap which includes multi-year financial planning.
To learn more about our IT support roadmapping services, just give us a call today on 01865 594 000 or drop your details in the form below and our team will be in touch.
