Is your business at risk because there is no documentation of your IT Systems?
When everything is going well no-one considers the potential problems that could be caused by some very simple situations. For many companies there is one person who is responsible for managing the IT Systems and often all the knowledge around these systems is in the IT persons head and not documented anywhere.
There are many scenarios that could occur that can cause a serious issue in the company when no accurate updated documentation exists.
Imagine your IT Manager resigns suddenly, or something goes wrong and they have an argument with the company. What if their performance is not good and you want to terminate them but cannot because you are scared what may happen to the systems. Imagine it is even worse and they are injured and cannot come to work or even something terrible happens like a critical accident and they are no longer around to help at all.
Accurate updated documentation on how your IT Systems are put together, what vendors you use, what contracts you have in place and most importantly what are all your administration password is critical to offset the risk associated with the above scenarios.
It is the company managements responsibility to ensure that this risk is mitigated and every CEO, COO, MD, GM etc should insist that they get their IT person to regularly update the documentation (or create it if it does not exist) and it should be stored somewhere safe such that it can be given to another person if needed to ensure smooth ongoing systems.
Even if you currently outsource your IT to a 3rd party as a company you should ensure you have a copy of such documentation in case the 3rd party vendor goes bankrupt or you have a contractual disagreement. Not being able to move to a new vendor because you feel scared something may go wrong because you have no control is not a good position to be in.
Critical information in the documentation should be validated occasionally by the IT person with their manager present to confirm. Documentation is useless unless it is up to date and accurate.
Another option is to employ FunctionEight Ltd to come into your offices and perform an audit and produce the documentation for you. We will work with your IT person or 3rd party vendor to ensure we have a comprehensive set of documentation that covers all the aspects that need covering to ensure a smooth transition to a new vendor or individual if necessary. At the same time we can give you ideas of where improvements must, need or could be done. Accurate documentation provides you piece of mind knowing that if something happens to your IT person you can still carry on business.
Email f8.info@functioneight.com or call +852 2868 2855 or +65 6345 5880 now to see how FunctionEight can support your IT systems.
