5 IT Infrastructure Management Strategies For Biz Dev Leaders

Salman Shahid, CEO at OXO Packaging.

The undeniable importance of a well-designed IT infrastructure in growing businesses has encouraged many organizations to spend more on tech. Despite spending a significant amount on IT, countless businesses find it challenging to streamline their operations and grow exponentially due to poor IT infrastructure.

Business development (BD) leaders should, therefore, pay significant attention to creating a reliable IT infrastructure for their organization.

It’s not always all about investment. Like marketing and sales, tech management requires a strategic approach. Let’s look at five IT infrastructure management strategies that every BD leader should understand.

1. Create multi-tier architecture for your business needs.

An inappropriate architecture of your IT infrastructure can hinder your business operations from running smoothly. If you want to establish a scalable, secure and reliable tech environment, create a multi-tier architecture that meets your business needs.

Two-tier, three-tier and N-tier (more than three tiers) architectures have earned popularity. Among these architectures, three-tier is considered to be excellent for most businesses. This architecture comes with a presentation layer (user interface or view tier), application layer (data processing tier) and data access layer (data storing and managing tier).

With a three-layer architecture, each tier can run on a separate server platform that you can develop and scale individually.

Multi-tier architecture can also help you provide better customer experiences. For example, you can develop iOS apps or applications for other operating systems using this architecture.

2. Gather and maintain data to improve customer experience.

As a BD leader, you need to stay informed about the fluctuating trends and innovative needs of your target audience. To do so, you can create a database management system (DBMS) that collects and maintains all of your customer data as well as data about your business operations. You can also use third-party DBMSs like Microsoft SQL, Oracle, etc.

By analyzing the preferences and patterns of your prospects, you can redefine your business goals and improve your services. Also, leverage data mining and machine learning for proficient customer experience analysis. Lastly, maintaining data also assists security management.

3. Choose reliable hardware for better performance.

Choosing the right hardware is paramount when building your company’s IT infrastructure. The performance of hardware determines how streamlined your business will operate.

First, to choose hardware, understand your business needs. Laptops, desktops, servers and routers are needed by nearly all businesses. Some peripherals like monitors, webcams, printers, etc., are also usually essential hardware.

When acquiring hardware, pay attention to its features, cost, performance, storage and compatibility. Despite how heavy the workload is, your hardware should make sure that business operations run smoothly. Opt for the hardware that has the right ratio of needing less maintenance while maintaining performance.

4. Go for automation and virtualization to streamline operations.

Automation and virtualization of business operations can be a game changer.

To get started, define which operations you want to automate. Some of the most common business operations you can automate are entering lead information into a CRM, social media post scheduling, email scheduling and more.

During this process, remember that automating your business processes is always experimental, and failing fast is crucial. If your tech infrastructure keeps you from failing fast, it’s time to redesign your IT infrastructure.

5. Centralize IT management for convenience.

IT centralization prevents BD leaders of multi-location organizations from the hassle of planning individualized IT infrastructure management. Managing IT from a single platform simplifies the management process.

Centralization also provides a single view of the usage of IT resources, helping BD leaders monitor performance and detect security problems. Moreover, you can also go for centralization to cut the cost of sourcing expensive hardware.

There are several reliable tools available to centralize your IT management, including software like Jira, TOPdesk, Zluri or others.

Conclusion

These five strategies are about creating an IT infrastructure that helps your business grow. By making wise decisions when investing in tech, you can enhance other aspects of business development in a way that scales alongside your company.

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