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Common IT Planning Pain Points and How to Solve Them

2024-10-22Highway 99 Technology Solutions Inc.

An IT plan defines your IT vision. It’s a technology roadmap to ensure your IT investments work for your business and align perfectly with its goals. IT planning touches on every aspect of IT management, including:

  • Identifying technical requirements and objectives
  • Cybersecurity and compliance
  • Hardware and software acquisition and implementation
  • IT economics
  • Usage optimization
  • Flexibility and scalability considerations
  • Legacy compatibility and futureproofing

Every tech-reliant business needs a strategic IT plan. It’s the only way to get the most out of tech investments.

However, developing a successful IT plan is often easier said than done. Planning is easily the #1 challenge for IT leaders. Let’s look at the top five factors that make IT planning so difficult.

Determining the Right Solutions

The vast tech landscape never stands still. Tech evolves at such a rapid pace that it can be overwhelmingly tricky to track down the right solutions.

While you might be spoilt for choice, you can’t just pick tech investments out of a hat. Every app and bit of hardware must be carefully selected to meet strict criteria such as cost, compatibility, and performance specs.

Budgeting

In 2023, companies spent between 5% and 19% of their revenue on IT. Depending on the enterprise, a 5% revenue share could translate to millions of dollars. What’s more, most businesses plan to increase their annual IT budgets in a bid to sharpen their digital edge.

The point is, IT is not cheap. That’s why budgeting is such a crucial part of IT planning. And it’s not just about going for the most inexpensive products or services either. An IT budget aims to balance cost, performance, and ROI.

Ensuring Compliance

Security compliance is now part and parcel of IT planning. You must consider the compliance implications of every IT decision you make. For instance, you must check how every new implementation, policy, or process fits with your compliance objectives.

Systems Integration

An IT estate is basically an assembly of several different devices and software applications working harmoniously as a single unit.

It takes a lot of effort and expertise to set up a working IT system. Synchronizing multiple assets, even at the hardware level, requires skills. This is especially true when trying to integrate legacy systems, such as old servers, with newer solutions, such as Kubernetes.

This is such a common problem that there’s a name for it: “integration hell.” Integration hell occurs when systems work just fine on their own but crash when combined.

User Experience Optimization

It’s important to consider user experience (UX) when planning an IT setup. Will the user find the system easy and pleasing to use?

In a business setting, UX can even influence employee productivity and IT costs. For example, a cumbersome software application or routine could create a steeper and costlier learning curve for the users. Also, you don’t want a system that stumps or frustrates your employees all the time.

Streamline Planning with Managed IT Services

You don’t have to tackle IT planning alone. Why not bring in the experts to help draft a solid IT plan?

At Highway 99 Technology Solutions, we understand the importance and headaches of IT planning. With our managed IT services, we will help you formulate a strategic plan that addresses all your concerns and objectives, from cost efficiency to next-level performance. We’ll also continuously assess your IT infrastructure and revise/update the plan whenever necessary.

Get in touch and learn more about how partnering with us can streamline your IT logistics, operations, and ROI.

Featured image credit: Image by GraphiqaStock on Freepik

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