Free tools to assist in an IT assessment

If your organization has a big IT team managing the entire IT environment, the question that you should always ask, is the IT team efficient and effective enough to support the organization’s business smoothly? Image by h3h.

Many organizations assemble an IT team to help automate the organization’s business processes. Some key tasks and purposes of IT include setting up and managing:

• Unified communications
• ERP systems
• Intranet systems
• Web portal
• Office networks

All the above are vital components required to allow businesses to run seamlessly. Any breakdown to any of the above causes downtime to business which affects the bottom line. Having an effective IT team and environment will ensure business continuity which provides a competitive edge over competitors.

Having said all the above, how can organizations ensure that their IT team is effective in keeping systems running, users are getting their emails on time, and critical IT systems are bug free? One way is to conduct an IT assessment from time to time.

An IT assessment is usually conducted to review an organizations existing IT environment. The outcome of the assessment will result in a report which states the details of the current environment as well as recommendations to achieve the desired state (IT To Be)

So the first step to this IT assessment is usually identifying how and what IT should be. This particular task may involve interviewing key stake holders such as the MD, CEO, IT managers, key users, etc. to uncover the real challenges behind IT. From here on, a future IT environment is envisioned and detailed out so that all involved can move towards.

One of the simplest way for IT to move forward is to adopt ITIL - a set of concepts and policies for managing information technology (IT) infrastructure, development and operations.

The following are some high level steps on how I would conduct an IT assessment.

1. Determine and decide on the desired future to be state
2. Find out the gaps between current situation and desired state
3. Report and disclose the findings
4. Identify action items to close the gaps in order to reach the desired state
5. Track and monitor the changes
6. Reassess and continuous improvement

These high level steps if broken down into the details can require a lot effort, time and resources to accomplish. The following are some free tools to assist in an IT assessment.

Tool #1 – LimeSurvey

This tool can be utilized to conduct online surveys which is an effective way to gather information from various parties within and outside an organization. Data collection is simplified as data is automatically stored and saved in the database once a respondent provides his / her feedback. Read here for more details on how to conduct an online survey for free

Tool #2 – Joomla or Google Sites

or

Either Joomla or Google Sites can be utilized to report on the findings of the assessment. It’s also a good tool to share information. All findings and recommendations can be placed here for people to be aware of. As for action items, people can work on it and track the progress, etc.

Tool #3 – Google Charts

Google Charts can be utilized to generate nice online graphs for free online. Read here for steps on how pie charts can be created online.

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So here you go, some tools which can be utilized to assist in an IT assessment. If there are more such tools later on, I will update here accordingly. Hope it helps.

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