As a business grows, typically, owners will throw more people at the processes of a business. The challenge is that technology strategy doesn’t always keep up with what’s being thrown at the growth of the business. And quite often, we’re just adding more and more people. But we’re not necessarily having our technology systems become more efficient as we grow. And that’s where an effective CIO or CTO will come into play. They should be thinking about how the technology systems should become more efficient and better.

So I’m going to cover some of the most common things that can go wrong; what you can do about it to make sure that you’re keeping tabs on the right things. 

Most Common Challenges and How to Deal with Them

Subscriptions Overwhelm

I want to talk about subscription overwhelm. Often when businesses are in the early stages, they’ll be looking for a best practice tool. And what that tool might be used for is a particular task or a particular function in the business. 

Subscription overwhelm happens where you have multiple tools that are potentially having overlap in the jobs that they’re doing. For example, using Zoom instead of Google Meet. When you have a Google Meet solution there, it’s alright to use Slack instead of Google Chat when you’ve got a good chat solution to use. Now we’ve got separate videos on why you might choose Meet over Zoom; and why you might choose Google Chat over Slack.

And I am biased in recommending business Google workspace because of the work that we do. But it’s not without merit that for you to use the Google ecosystem simplifies the way that you’re working. It could potentially save you 1000s, if not 10s of 1000s of dollars a year in your IT spend. How? By not doubling up on tools that you don’t need. So the easiest way to deal with this is to ask yourself “why I choose this application?”

Google workspace means that there’s more to maintain, more to protect, and more potential security vulnerabilities, particularly when staff are coming and going in a fast-growing business. 

Organisation’s Security with business Google Workspace

The second point that I want to share is about security. And that is, usually as businesses grow, and they start to add more and more headcount, security can start to become a little bit lacking. And what I mean by that is just making it easy and convenient for everyone to access the information that they need, which can lead to, unfortunately, cross-pollination of information that might not be suitable for everyone.

Now, let’s talk about when things go wrong inside of shared folders or sharing inside of Google Drive. If it’s not done correctly in business Google workspace with the right prediction policies. One of the biggest risks to organizations is information flowing out of the organization, and that might be financial reports, it might be customer information. There are even jail terms for anyone who makes serious breaches of these laws. 

And so it’s something really serious for directors to make sure they’re paying attention to now one of the largest risks is files being shared outside the organization. There are some simple policies that you can configure inside of the business Google workspace’s admin panel, which locks down the sharing from Google Drive. Now the challenge is that we have a layer of convenience to balance with security. We’re always trying to find this balance between not inconveniencing our users and being able to keep our users trained and on track with basic security principles, but also having enough security that the business is well protected. And intellectual property is not at risk.

The simplest way I like to describe how you should do your IT policies is simple policies, strong enforcement, make sure the policy is super, super easy to follow, but enforce it strongly.

Onboarding and Offboarding Technical Policies

The final tip in this blog is to ensure that your onboarding and offboarding technical policies are nice and tidy, easy to follow for your HR team but promote good security practices for your business. When you’re configuring a new account, the best security policy would be when you issue a new account to someone in the organization to force them to change the password and set up their own fresh password. 

Now even if you’re a small business, and you only have 10 odd employees in the business, you’re not yet in the big game of scale mode, it’s still a good idea to set up group-based permissions. Because what this does is, it builds the discipline of good security practice inside the business. And you can make sure that your onboarding saves a bunch of time by being able to add one person to one group and give them access to all the resources that they need. 

Now, don’t forget your onboarding process as well. When you have someone leave the business, you want to make sure you’ve got the right processes in place to clean up their accounts, redirect their email, and potentially even archive their accounts. If you’re interested in helping with your onboarding and offboarding processes, we’ve got some great frameworks in place. And we can even tailor custom onboarding and onboarding processes to your particular business. 

Takeaway

Now if you’re a business owner or an IT leader, and you’re wondering, where should I start with reviewing the security of my Google workspace account, but I recommend you consider an audit with our team. Hit the button above to request an audit. If you’re eligible, our team will reach out to you and discuss everything that’s going on inside your workspace account. We’ll check the basics like your DNS settings and jump into some of the more advanced policies. But really, we’re looking to help you get the most out of your investment in business Google workspace, whether you’re a business or an educational organization, or even a Not For Profit.