When Was the Last Time You Checked the Health of Your Technology Environment?
Small businesses don't usually have technology problems because they haven't spent enough money on technology. More often, the owners and leaders have simply been busy running the business.
Over time, people come and go. New devices get purchased. Software gets added. Processes evolve. Most changes make perfect sense at the time, but they happen gradually and nobody stops to look at the whole picture.
Then one day somebody asks a simple question, and nobody is entirely sure of the answer.
Who still has administrator access?
What would happen if a laptop was stolen?
Are former employees completely removed from all systems?
How would important information be recovered if something went wrong?
These are the sorts of questions that often indicate it's time for a technology health check.
Too many people have admin access
It starts with good intentions: Someone needs to install software, or someone else needs to troubleshoot a problem. Before long, several people have administrator access, and nobody has reviewed it for years.
It isn't usually a problem until an account is compromised. That's why it's worth periodically reviewing who has administrator access and whether they still need it.
Former staff still have access
This one often surprises business owners and executives. Most businesses have a process for welcoming new staff, but offboarding doesn't always receive the same attention.
Accounts, licences, shared folders and application access can sometimes remain active longer than intended. Not because anyone is careless, but because everyone is busy and assumes someone else has already taken care of it.
It's in Microsoft 365, so we're covered
I've heard variations of this more times than I can count.
The real question isn't where your information is stored.
The real question is what would happen if something important disappeared tomorrow.
Could you recover it? How quickly? And do you know exactly what your recovery process looks like?
Having information stored in the cloud and having a recovery strategy are not necessarily the same thing.
Technology isn't managed consistently
As businesses grow, inconsistencies start to appear. One laptop is fully updated. Another isn't. One device has the right security settings. Another was configured years ago and has never been reviewed.
The problem isn't usually any single device. It's the fact that nobody is looking at the environment as a whole.
Manual work becomes normal
This is probably the biggest opportunity I see.
A typical workflow might look like:
A staff member receives an email.
They update a spreadsheet.
They enter the same information somewhere else.
They send another email.
Someone updates a record.
Nothing is technically wrong with the process. In fact, it may have worked perfectly well when the business was smaller. The problem is that these small tasks are repeated every day. Over time they consume a surprising amount of staff time.
The businesses getting the most value from technology aren't necessarily buying more software. They're finding ways to reduce repetitive administration with the tools they have so their people can focus on work that requires judgement, experience, and decision-making.
The good news!
If any of the points above sound familiar, you're not alone. Most of them are issues I see regularly when reviewing small business environments.
Addressing these areas often don't require a major project or a large technology investment to address. The first step is simply understanding what already exists, identifying any gaps, and deciding what should be prioritised.
That's exactly what a good technology health check is designed to do.
When was the last time someone looked at your technology environment as a whole?
