Has this ever happened to you?
You decided to run to the grocery store but didn’t make a list. Since you’re not sure what’s already in your pantry (or exactly what you need for your recipe!), you just toss the ingredients you think you’ll need into your shopping cart. Inevitably, you end up with an extra gallon of milk (though you already had one in the refrigerator), several candy bars (that you didn’t need), and you forgot to buy the one crucial ingredient that you needed to make dinner tonight.
More often than not, you return from one of these shopping trips slapping your forehead. Strangely enough, however, companies frequently treat their IT inventories like a grocery run without a list! Without taking inventory, a business doesn’t know exactly what equipment they have, where it is, or whether or not they’re missing something they’re going to need. And unfortunately, this can cause much bigger issues than running out of macaroni.
An inaccurate tech inventory can lead to major headaches. Outdated IT equipment can decrease your business’s efficiency and make life much harder than it needs to be. Expired software licenses or improper license usage can spell t-r-o-u-b-l-e in the case of an audit. And if a business doesn’t have a firewall, it’s open to cyberattacks and data breaches.
Taking inventory of IT equipment gives you valuable information to prevent these headaches. An inventory can show you things like how many laptops your business has, if they are using an outdated operating system, and whether software is current.
However, the task of inventorying can be time consuming and daunting. You might not even be sure which red flags to look for in your equipment. However, a managed IT service provider can take the guesswork out of this process.
By taking an IT Inventory, we can:
- Trace your business’s equipment to tell you what you have.
In the blitz to move to work-from-home, it’s easy to have lost track of inventory. Now that things have slowed down, we can see and trace your equipment so you can have an accurate account of your business’ laptops, firewalls, workstations, servers, and the operating systems running on these devices .
- Evaluate which equipment is still up-to-date and efficient.
While some pieces of outdated IT equipment might need to be replaced, other equipment will still be useful for longer. Knowing this helps you to prioritize purchases to make the best use of your budget.
- Help you know which outdated IT equipment needs to be upgraded.
When you need to replace a piece of equipment, it can be overwhelming to decide what is the best fit for your business. Our expertise can help you get the tools that are right for you and are within your budget, and we can help you anticipate future IT needs.
If you’ve decided it’s time to stop “shopping without a list” and get a current inventory of your IT, {{cta(‘87507b29-88ca-41b3-abd2-3cd008f96952’)}} of El Paso and San Antonio for a free consultation. We would love to get your IT inventory up-to-date to help your business get a handle on what you have and what you will need.
