Is your IT department an asset or liability?
Does your IT team bring value in growing your business? How about enabling security, compliance, uptime, downtime, salesforce, remote workers, and overall digital transformation?
Let’s talk about IT as a whole.
The technology team, IT department, computer “guy/girl” has changed over the last 5 years, let alone the last 10, 20, and certainly 30 years. In today’s business environment (certainly post covid with all the shifts in consumer behavior towards digital services), technology is either a game changer for your business or potentially a hinderance. If you’re the CEO, President, Chairman of the Board, CFO, COO or have other leadership roles how do you know if your business is getting what it needs and wants from your technology department? Let me tell you a story of how Tier4 Advisors was able to turn what was once an IT cost center into a thriving revenue generating machine.
A large manufacturing client with 13,000 employees approached Tier4 with the hopes of better understanding the impact of their IT department on their business, areas for improvement, and stronger ROI. The existing IT leadership had been in their same role for 14 years and had fought “the cloud” and other transformational projects for years. The executive leadership team wanted new ideas in an effort to lower costs, improve uptime and security, and get better value for their costs. The business was still running off physical servers in an on-premise data center in their HQ building and hadn’t done much research on new options. It was good job security for the legacy IT team and until further notice was their strategy.
Tier4 completed an assessment of the entire technology department consisting of infrastructure, telecom, internet connectivity, security, head count, strategy, architecture, procurement, and hiring/training. Turns out the organization had some really great employees doing respectable work for their company. The cutting-edge technology was absent but the desire to deliver for the business was present and sound. Additionally, the desire to transform and innovate was strong but the IT team’s understanding of game changing technologies in the marketplace was limited.
After the assessment was completed, there were a dozen or so recommendations provided such as retire aging hardware, move all management for disaster recovery to the cloud, eliminate copy data by implementing copy data virtualization, outsource telephony systems with contact center software for better productivity, and outsource all security and compliance functions to a reputable managed service security provider (MSSP). Introductions were made to the right service providers to meet these needs, and Tier4 assisted the client further by aggressively negotiating pricing, MSA’s, and SLA’s. These changes would eliminate a decade’s worth of lackluster results and boost ROI. Soon the business was growing sales, retaining and communicating better with customers, and offering greater value with technology. This process could’ve easily taken 4-5 years if the client had done it 100% internally, but by using an outside IT expert we were able to drastically reduce the timeline down to a few months. Now the client has a team of rock stars in IT that are leveraging the best technology providers to enable lasting growth and change within their organization. It’s been a huge win for all parties involved.
ABOUT TIER4: Tier4 Advisors was founded on the premise of helping Business Leaders simplify and expedite their IT procurement process, helping them find the best service providers at the best price. Specializing in Data Center, Telecom, Managed Services, Security & Compliance, and other Emerging Technologies, Tier4 has built a vendor databased of over 700+ vendors that our clients can leverage to quickly find what they need. Tier4 has completed over 1,000+ successful IT Projects around the world. We are the trusted partner you want, with the experience you need.