Don’t worry, the Internet will be fine without you…at least for a few hours. You may even have a chance at conversation with the person in line with you (well if they aren’t intensely staring at their smartphone), maybe call your mother, or some other type of face-to-face human interaction.

Technology is great and enables us to accomplish our tasks with ruthless efficiency. We are masters of our domain, always on, day or night, responding to email, posting to Twitter, and generally never unplugging. The thing is, we need to unplug and reset from time to time.  The airplane was the last place you could do that, but now we have in-flight WiFi, oh well…

We are in the business of ensuring that your technology is available 24/7, so I’m certainly not advocating that we quit using it! I am saying that the holiday season is a good time to “unplug” for a while, enjoy time with family and friends, and not worry about responding to that next email within 1 minute! I promise that we will be diligently monitoring everything so that when you “plug back in” you are humming right along in no time.

The advent of Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter ensure we keep updated on what people are doing. Don’t confuse this with how they are feeling and what’s really going on in their lives. Take a minute to pick up the phone, get in the car, or write that letter to someone to get a real update. Technology enables us to have a lot MORE relationships than ever before, and I think that’s great. It’s up to us to take the time to add some DEPTH to them, so take the time to do it!

I want to take time and thank all our Clients, team members, and partners for the incredible opportunity we have been given to all work with all of you. We are finishing up our 7^th consecutive year of profitable growth and have maintained over 20% growth each year! I hope everyone has a chance to relax, reflect, and unplug sometime in the next week. Merry Christmas!

If you are the person that thinks your car is just getting “broke in” at 150,000 miles then this article is for you.  I certainly understand the idea of driving it until the wheels fall off, but this isn’t a great approach for your corporate technology planning.  Technology is constantly evolving and needs an appropriate lifecycle plan in place, otherwise you will end up with random productivity loss, unexpected capital expenditures, and unhappy employees!

Let’s start with the hardware side of the equation.  First we need to define some REALISTIC, useful lifecycles for this equipment.  Realistic meaning how fast the technology is evolving, how it’s being used, and how long until end-users start using it as an excuse for not getting work done:

The first step is an assessment of your current infrastructure to figure out what areas have the most impact on productivity followed by general business impact.  The easy part is mapping the Realistic Useful Life versus actual time in service.  This assessment will give you a very accurate picture of what areas need attention and will also help frame a lifecycle plan that will get you on the right track.

Often we see one of two extremes, newer end-user equipment with out-dated servers and networking gear OR the opposite.  Neither one of these situations is ideal as it leads to unplanned replacements that affect end-users as equipment fails or the company experiences downtime for a server outage.  Having seen this situation so many times we are able to help Clients quickly prioritize where they need to focus on short, medium, and long term so that they get the maximum value of this hardware spend.

The next step in getting this under control is to commit to replacing any out-of-warranty hardware whenever it’s having issues.  Stop spending time rebuilding desktops that are old or replacing parts – just replace it.  I know it seems cheaper to fix things ad-hoc, but it is a productivity drain.  Go ahead and purchase a couple of spare (new) machines and have them ready for instant swap out when an older machine dies or has issues.

Now we need to setup a realistic hardware budget for the next three years.  Prioritize spending across the categories and in line with what is most business critical in your specific situation.  It might be getting all new workstations deployed or purchasing a new server – whatever makes sense.  If you don’t plan on having to spend the money and the hardware is “working”, guess what, you will not do it!  We suggest purchasing new hardware with a warranty equal to the expected useful life.  This makes it easier to keep track of when to replace it and also ensures there are no unexpected replacement costs during the useful life.

The final piece of this is to DO SOMETHING.  Deferred maintenance isn’t going away, just like the roof on your house isn’t going to fix itself.  Talking a consistent pro-active approach can quickly get a company on a comfortable lifecycle that ensures higher productivity and happier end-users!  Contact Stringfellow today to have us perform a free assessment of your infrastructure and help put a plan in place to ensure your business is functioning at its maximum potential!