More than ever, it is crucial to deliver a customer experience that generates added value that measures up to the multiple challenges the customer must face.In these exceptional times, an exceptional customer experience must be the norm. This customer experience can take several forms, such as when your mechanic identified a serious problem by listening to your car’s running motor over the phone, in view of the need to be effective from a distance. This accomplishment provided the opportunity to offer you the additional 20% you expected. The same applies to the information technology field.

Perpetuating your investments in information technology (IT)

Your computer park is your organization’s car. Without it, no production, no management, no communication and no planning. No organization. Whether your company is a very small enterprise (VSE), a small- or medium-sized enterprise (SME) or a large organization, the challenge is the same: perpetuating your investments in IT by making them efficient, profitable and sustainable. These investments are tangible and intangible: on the one hand, fixed and mobile workstations, networks, servers, fixed telephones, intelligent telephones, tablets, printers, and tutti quanti; on the other hand, software, applications, operating systems and drivers, amongst others. Where to start?

First step: evaluating your computing needs

Once the added value of the tools to acquire determined, the risks and their possible impacts documented, and the costs, benefits and return on investment calculated, you have the foundation of an action plan that is based on facts rather than on perceptions. This rigorous analysis helps to identify the tools that best serve your interests, challenges and objectives. In doing so, it answers questions such as the ones listed below.

• On-premise or cloud integration?
• Proprietary or open-source software and operating system?
• Best of breed hybrid or business application software?
• Fixed workstations equipped with an 18-core processor with a base frequency of 2.3 GHz and a turbo frequency of 4.3 GHz with 50MB cache memory OR all-in-one mobile workstations equipped with a processor that combines low energy consumption and computing power, a 500GB hard disk and a pre-installed consumer-oriented operating system?

In all cases, depending on your activities, objectives and challenges, keep in mind the homogenization and service life of your computing resources. Not only will you save in the long term on your maintenance costs, but also your machines’ robustness will support intensive use, as well as software and operating system updates.

Second step: controlling your assets

You will not know what problems to solve if you do not have a precise, comprehensive and up-to-date inventory of your computing assets and their use within your company. In the past, establishing this inventory with the help of an Excel file was workable, but this is not the case anymore. In addition to the list of your assets, you want a tool that collects the technical (configurations), administrative (purchases), financial (contracts) and dynamic (tasks and users) information related to their use. In other words, what is bought and used, in what operational context, how, when and by whom. This is, therefore, the transition from a static tool to a configuration management database of your tangible and intangible assets, including mapping, relations, usages, authorizations and users. Much more specific, is it not?

Third step: maintaining your assets

You will not know what problems to prevent if you are not able to monitor your assets’ life cycle, from purchase to use through their migration, upgrade and replacement. Your park may experience malfunctions and breakdowns, or be used in an unauthorized manner (shadow IT), thus opening the door to computing risks. It may be subject to internal (data theft) or external (cyberattacks) threats. The monitoring of your assets enables you to manage the use of your systems in real time and prevent these possible occurrences. This monitoring of your computer park can even auto-regulate by signaling, with the help of an automated maintenance schedule, the preventive interventions that must be done (replacements, updates, corrective measures, installation of new software, implementation of new procedures, addition or deletion of authorizations, etc.). Furthermore, maintaining your assets in a preventive manner enables your technical support team to be proactive, an appreciable benefit for your organization and its multiple stakeholders.

Fourth step: developing your assets

Now that you know what you have, use and manage, developing your assets to keep up with the evolution of your needs and your business environment becomes much more profitable, notably:

• implementation of a roadmap of the evolution, maintenance and life cycle of your technologies that meet the current and future needs of the organization;
• updates of operating systems;
• upgrades of equipment;
• maintenance and modernization of business solutions;
• optimization of legacy systems’ capacities in response to the emergence of new needs;
• documentation of the procedures and knowledge relative to the technologies used;
• technological watch and evaluation of innovation possibilities;
• training of technical teams.

Fifth step: entrust to Cofomo the management of your information technologies

By entrusting to Cofomo the management of your information technologies, and their evolution, you are choosing:

• an experienced partner extremely knowledgeable about your activities, objectives and needs, current and future;
• a pragmatic approach that transforms your strategic priorities into a tangible operational plan;
• a proactive governance of your systems;
• the smooth deployment of technologies such as Microsoft 365, and many more, that meet your evolving business needs and line of business;
• an homogenization that improves the performances, the reliability, the robustness and the evolution of your computing assets;
• an optimal profitability of your investments, which enables your IT service to respond immediately and without friction to the changing priorities of your organization;
• an expert consulting organization that trains and coaches your teams;
• the creation of value for your clients.

Cofomo implements a strategy that provides for a smooth transition of your current infrastructures towards optimized infrastructures. Cofomo’s team manages the maintenance and the evolution of your technological assets and trains your technical teams on the implementation of the best practices and norms, as well as on the use of the tools, of the industry. Contact us without further delay.