The Best Time To Perform A Technology Audit Is Yesterday

Technology seems to wash over the world in waves, with each new deluge erasing the one that came before — or so it seems. For businesses, this pattern leaves layers of outdated equipment, unpatched software, and unseen vulnerabilities. In the world of software development, this dynamic appears in the form of cruft and technical debt, also known as “the code we’ll get around to cleaning/fixing later.” Every organization deals with these conditions at some level and measuring the severity is important for two reasons: first, to take stock of your organization’s technological “health” and second, to form a plan for getting healthier. Enter the technology audit, which is a lot like a yearly physical exam from your doctor, but instead of looking at biomarkers, you’re looking at how well electricity and data flow through your business.

A technology audit is a methodical way to catalog all of the equipment and software systems that your business uses or stores. At the absolute bare minimum, you should come away with a detailed inventory list. A thorough audit should also include details such as: 

Put another way, an information technology audit is an attempt to document your organization’s technology capacity and needs, including regulatory compliance, security, and data backups. It also helps you ensure that your IT department has the tools and equipment they need to succeed.

The audit process is an opportunity to identify unnecessary equipment, unused software, and operational risk from systems that may need repair or aren’t properly backed up. Even if your IT department is running smoothly, a regular technology audit will help you establish a robust disaster recovery plan, a business continuity plan, as well as accurate budgeting for equipment and software. Imagine that you have thousands of dollars worth of unused equipment that could be sold, or written off due to obsolescence, sitting in a closet or warehouse; or maybe you discover that you’re still paying for an expensive software subscription that no one uses, or that is functionally redundant (in a bad way) — a technology audit helps you discover and address these kinds of issues.

For most businesses, the reason they haven’t performed a technology audit isn’t laziness or lack of desire, it just feels like distracts from the work of running the business. Your team is busy and performing an audit probably sounds slightly more exciting than watching paint dry. One solution is to scope out the project and break it into weekly sprints and tasks that your team can tackle piece by piece. Since your IT team is going to perform the audit, you need to set healthy expectations and objectives. Don’t think of a technology audit as an optional project, agree to make it a regular part of your business operation. 

Here’s an example of just how essential a technology audit can be: in early 2020 when the states began locking down in response to the coronavirus pandemic, many banks and credit unions were totally unprepared. Either their disaster recovery and business continuity plans didn’t include employees working from home, or they hadn’t revisited the plan and everything was outdated. A thorough technology audit would have revealed this vulnerability and perhaps eased the pain of moving to support customers in a remote environment.

The purpose of an audit isn’t box-checking and report-writing, it’s to examine the technology systems of your organization from multiple angles so you can fix what’s broken and prepare for the unexpected. Here are a few major issues that could torpedo your information technology audit.

• Not giving your team sufficient time or resources to complete the audit
• Not establishing the scope and reporting expectations of the audit
• Not making the audit a priority
• Not giving your team the authority to perform a rigorous audit
• Not taking steps to remedy the issues that come up in the audit

You should customize this template for your business and empower your audit team to look for unlisted vulnerabilities as well opportunities for better security, lower equipment costs, and greater resiliency.

The benefit of using your employees to perform an information technology audit is familiarity. And the downside of using your employees to perform the audit is also… familiarity. It’s easy to overlook or under-estimate the significance of issues that you look at every day. Sometimes a fresh set of eyes can reveal critical problems that fly under your radar.

By bringing in an outside firm to perform the technology assessment or audit, you will benefit from:

• Leveraging the expertise of a team that has worked with a variety of organizations
• Trusting that they have a proven system for a smooth and efficient audit
• Receiving recommendations on best practices, and potential optimizations

i.e.Smart Systems is a Houston, TX based technology integration partner that specializes in design and installation of audio/visual technology and structured cabling. For more than three decades, our team of in-house experts has partnered with business owners, architectural firms, general contractors, construction managers, real estate developers, and designers in the Houston market, to deliver reliable, scalable solutions that align with their unique goals.