Moving premises can often be an exciting prospect for a small business. Generally, it means that the business has outgrown its current surroundings and is moving on to a location which better suits its new and broader horizons.
Such a move, however, can also be a very stressful time for a firm with IT relocation especially proving to be more troublesome than most anticipate. To ensure that you aren’t caught unawares when the time comes for you to relocate, therefore, we have compiled a guide to some of the main challenges posed by IT relocation.
The below guide will explain the major challenges which you can expect to encounter and will offer invaluable advice and guidance as to how to meet them successfully.
Challenge 1: Logistics
There are a huge number of different tasks and elements involved in relocating an office and its IT systems. The logistics of ensuring that all of these are completed at the right times and in smooth combination with one another is, therefore, a significant challenge.
Ensuring that the configuration of your company’s new office is ideally suited to your IT needs, for example, is absolutely vital but is something that can be overlooked. Firms, for instance, might find themselves trying to relocate their IT equipment and systems into a location without an ideal place for their servers or where not enough individual phone lines can be installed.
To avoid these kinds of logistical nightmares, it is crucial for you to fully understand your office’s IT needs and to work out exactly how things can be set up in your new location in order to meet them. This is not a quick or a simple task – and is one which will have to be undertaken alongside your normal day-to-day work – but it will prove absolutely invaluable in the long run.
Challenge 2: Budgeting
An important aspect of any major business decision, the budgeting of an IT relocation can prove particularly challenging. It is very difficult at the outset to accurately budget for such a move and there can be a number of different ways in which a pre-set budget can be thrown into chaos during the process.
One common problem encountered when trying to budget for an office move, for example, is the provision of inaccurate quotes by contractors charged with undertaking different elements of the relocation. What’s more, many firms who relocate are hit with hidden costs that they simply did not expect at the outset. These can include service charges imbedded in their new lease, higher than expected business rates and a number of other commonly overlooked expenses.
As with the aforementioned challenges associated with logistics, it is through research and preparation that a business can most successfully meet these budgetary issues. By thoroughly investigating your new location, new lease and the companies you trust with the practical elements of your move, you can far more accurately budget for your IT relocation.
Challenge 3: Downtime
Perhaps the most commonly overlooked challenge associated with an IT relocation is the downtime in business operations which it can create and how that may affect a company. Moving all of a firm’s IT systems, telecommunications and staff to a new location can lead to a significant period of time where services cannot be provided to customers and customers cannot reach your company.
It is crucial, therefore, to do everything that you can to limit the amount of downtime which any IT office move may create. In order to do this, you must first take the time to properly plan and arrange phone line and internet installations. This ensures that these crucial channels of communication are open for you as soon as you are physically in place in your new premises.
Another potential solution to this particular challenge, too, is to try to arrange as much of the physical relocation as you can to take place at the weekend. If you can get your new office as close to operational as possible before moving from your current location and then undertake the move at the weekend, after all, the amount of downtime which you will suffer will drastically decrease.
Being aware of the above challenges and taking some of the steps we suggest in order to meet them, should help you to achieve a far more successful IT relocation. If you need more advice or guidance individually tailored to you, however, you can get in touch with one of EC-MSP’s experts today.
