You might think the whole point of having an IT partner is to prevent you from having to think about IT yourself. Wrong. That’s simply a wasted opportunity.
A good IT partner will monitor your IT and act as a point of contact for any problems or glitches, but a great IT partner: they should be a business ally, actively helping you to strategise and deliver the technology that will help your business grow.
This partnership is only possible, however, with effective communication.
Streamlined IT requests process
Your team will be coming across new software and processes on a daily basis, so how should they share and discuss the ones they think could benefit the business?
By creating an IT requests process for your team and IT partner, you can help them to cooperate effectively and create a productive forum for generating a relevant and productive IT strategy.
- Create a forum for internal discussion. Having a system to discuss suggested ideas is essential to make sure your team is all on the same page about IT suggestions before you put them to your IT partner. If you can’t afford time for a meeting to discuss these ideas, tools like Basecamp make these collaborative discussions easy online.
- Have one point of contact. There’s no gain to all of your employees contacting your IT partner separately, so nominate one person to call or send an email.
- Organise a meeting. Once your IT partner reviews your business’s options and makes a recommendation, a group meeting should be the next step. This can be done in person or over a conference call, but if you choose the latter make sure you use a conference call system like Gotomeeting or Skype for Business which allows your team and IT partner to share their screen and display their suggestions visually.
With your team and your IT partner working together to find the best systems for your business, it should be easy for you to implement the kind of technology that keeps your employees happy and helps your business grow.
