Keeping IT teams busy is easy. There’s an unending stream of work to be done—patches, upgrades, and routine maintenance can easily fill up each week. It’s important to make time for IT teams to do other kinds of work—the work that supports business development efforts and adds true value to the business. Ensuring the work the team does adds value requires developing a strategy to guide your IT decisions.

As you develop your strategy, don’t make these strategic mistakes:

1. Committing to a single vendor.

Working with one vendor simplifies vendor management and can improve the level of support you receive, in addition to providing opportunities to negotiate better prices. However, you also expose yourself to vendor lock-in and are vulnerable to problems if the vendor’s level of service deteriorates or if their prices increase. Your IT strategy should ensure you’re protected against vendor lock-in and receive the services you need without risking your entire infrastructure if the vendor experiences issues.

1. Defaulting to cloud.

It seems like cloud went from the risky decision to the standard solution almost overnight. Nevertheless, defaulting to cloud as the platform for any new IT workloads is a mistake. Each new workload should be assessed to discover its requirements and risks, and it should be assigned to the platform that meets its needs best. In addition, cloud needs ongoing oversight to ensure it is utilized properly and costs are controlled.

3. Adopting new technologies and methodologies inappropriately.

Similar to the issues with defaulting to cloud, don’t try to use methodologies such as agile development and DevOps where they don’t match the project needs. Agile and DevOps have their place, but by design they promote a very dynamic environment. Critical applications and core services need a higher level of stability.

4. Failing to prioritize.

Prioritization is critical throughout IT. Whether prioritizing which project offers the best return or which cyberthreat presents the biggest actual risk for your business, failing to understand what truly matters to your business results in IT that doesn’t provide the benefits the business needs. Failing to prioritize can also mean your team spends its time reacting to issues rather than taking proactive steps to generate positive results.

5. De-emphasizing training.

Cybersecurity depends on employees practicing same computing. Success of any new technology requires the employees who use the technology to understand it. Both of these require periodic, ongoing training throughout your organization.

6. Accepting the status quo.

If things are “good enough,” there may not seem to be much reason to change it. But “good enough” today may not be good enough next year. Rather than scrambling when problems arise, you need to keep an eye on the future and create plans that ensure you never fall behind on meeting your technology needs.

Strategic advisory services from Prescient Solutions help businesses develop effective strategies to keep their IT functioning at high levels. Contact us to learn how our strategic advice can help your business meet its IT needs.