Before reading, be sure to take a look at the other blogs in our series on the four stages of a high quality IT plan for your business:

• Discover: 5 Essential Steps to Discover Your Business’s It Direction
• Design: 7 Questions to Ask Before Designing Your Business Network Environment
• Plan: 7 Crucial Components of an Effective IT Project Plan  

In our ongoing series about developing a quality technology plan for your business, we’ve covered a couple of important topics. We began with 5 Essential Steps to Discover Your Business’s IT Direction, and continued with 7 Questions to Ask Before Designing Business Network Environment. The next phase, after Discover and Design, is Plan.

Once you’ve identified your goals and designed an IT project for your business, such as updating network infrastructure or moving to the cloud, it can be tempting to jump in right away. After all, you’re most likely eager to solve the problem at hand as quickly as possible. But careful planning is critical for ensuring that the entire project runs smoothly, sticks to a schedule, stays on budget. It may not be the most glamorous step, but its importance can’t be overlooked! 

There comes a time in the life of every business when something needs to change with your IT. Whether your equipment is outdated, your processes are ineffective, or your entire IT system is simply failing, eventually you cross a line. Issues you were able to ignore before have suddenly gone on too long, and it’s time for a major fix.

When you're ready to design a new network environment for your business, you’re probably eager to get going and solve the problems you’ve been dealing with for so long. But designing a new IT infrastructure isn’t as easy as just buying some new equipment. If you’re going to invest in an IT upgrade, do it in a way that enhances and optimizes your business operations.