Change can fill business leaders or owners with fear.

Isn’t it amazing how doing something that scares you or fills you with a sense of trepidation almost always turns out for the best?

I can’t really claim to have a fear of heights after abseiling down the Spinnaker Tower in 2012 and now having jumped out of a plane at 10,000 feet, but both events pushed me completely outside of my comfort zone.

How many times have you in your personal and professional life taken the easy or easier option?

When Karen Scott from the Diabetes Wellness and Research Foundation asked for volunteers at a Portsmouth University networking event in April 2018 the easiest thing to do would have been to keep quiet, but no my hand went up. I knew that my 30-year anniversary of being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes needed to be marked somehow and what better way than to challenge myself and to raise money into research for a cure. It is estimated that over 4million people in the UK are living with diabetes with potentially as many again undiagnosed.

Change can fill business leaders or owners with fear or at least trepidation, changing a key supplier to your organisation such as your IT partner isn’t a decision that it is made in an instant as my skydive decision was.

We at Aura Technology understand what a big decision it is to change IT partner and have the following tips for you to consider.

?        Are your requirements the same as they were when you started working with your current IT partner, have you changed, have they changed, have you both changed?

?        Are they really providing a value for money service?

?        When did you last stop and think about if your IT and technology is a help or a hindrance in meeting your business goals?

?        Does your business plan have an IT or technology section?

?        Are your teams more mobile than they were 5 years ago, are you providing them with the tools they need to be more mobile?

?        Is your line of business application up to date and when did you last review its suitability?

?        Get everyone involved. The IT experience of each and every member of staff is important. Collect feedback from across your business to shape revised support requirements?

?        Be open to new possibilities. Technology never sits still and there may be more efficient ways of working that you hadn’t even thought about?

?        Review hardware as well as software. Every component of your network affects its performance for instance when did you last review the routers, firewalls, and switches?

 ?        Think across all of your technology requirements not just IT, for instance, do your teams need Skype, Mobile and Desk phones?

?        Appreciate the importance of IT for your business and ensure that employees understand this. Your entire business infrastructure relies on having effective and reliable IT services.

We treat the on-boarding of a new client into the Aura family as a separate project, often it is linked to the production of a Technology Roadmap, an appendix to your business plan that documents how technology will support your plans.

We would love to discuss how we make moving to Aura a seamless painless experience.