VIRTUAL CIO CONSULTING
Aligning your IT operations to support your business strategy.
Through Virtual CIO (vCIO), we work with you to align your internal systems and processes to drive business goals, develop IT strategy, meet compliance requirements and protect your data.
An experienced technology strategist at your service
Great IT leadership not only fixes problems as they arise, but develops strategy and solutions for long-term situations and questions. A Virtual CIO is essentially an experienced technology service provider who serves as your IT strategist. Increasingly, technology is less about troubleshooting day-to-day maintenance issues and more about how to harness it to generate new revenue or efficiencies with growth-minded strategy and solutions. This is where an vCIO IT strategist can
Believe it or not, it is possible for small and medium-sized businesses to innovate and harness technological opportunities and efficiencies without spending six figures a year on a Chief Information Officer. As Virtual CIO (vCIO) we will team with your existing IT person / staff and decision-making authorities to provide the technology guidance, strategy and execution support your business requires. The primary difference between what you receive from our Virtual CIO services and other managed services or technical advisory services is that the Virtual CIO will a broader view of your business, focusing on the overall business and IT alignment.
Virtual CIO Criteria
- The ability to link IT systems to business objectives
- Knowledge of technology trends likely to impact the customer
- A firm grasp of IT project planning and management
- Experience with IT budgeting and cost control process
Virtual CIO Solutions
- Security & Risk Assessment
- Software Assessment / Selection
- Infrastructure Assessment & Inefficiencies
- Vendor Management
- Vulnerability Evaluation
- Network analysis and planning
- Backup and disaster recovery advising
Our Virtual CIO service can be provided on an on-demand time and materials basis. You can engage us to consult on technology decisions only as needed, or as an ongoing retainer engagement priced per month.
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Client-oriented expertise and advice
Understanding business technology is our business. We know that your time is precious, that’s why our vCIO services work around a schedule that works best for you. Scale to your exact needs with your Mosaic vCIO – whether working on a single new project or tackling long-term goals and innovation, there’s a package for you. Here are some of the more specific elements we will review.
As your Virtual CIO we will help you manage and maintain a wide variety of technology priorities.
Cybersecurity
Security is an essential factor for any organization, and small businesses like yours are the biggest target for hackers today. Risk assessment, data protection, training awareness, and third-party security practices are necessary to ensure maximum security and protection. Continuous diagnostic monitoring is required to view your network, identify risks, quantify attacks and/or breaches, and mitigate them. Digital forensic tools are especially important for companies that require regulatory compliance and incident management. Identity and access management is a security practice that enables only authorized individuals to access resources to comply with security and compliance requirements. These are crucial elements for any business. Your vCIO will manage all these and other cybersecurity requirements for your business.
Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
Disaster recovery and business continuity refer to your organization’s ability to recover data after a disaster occurs and when IT services are shut down or compromised. Both practices involve the process of backing up data and preparing policies and procedures to implement in the event of a disaster. Your vCIO will confirm your business can stay up and running no matter the IT disaster, manmade or natural.
Mobile Workforce Technologies and Solutions
With the BYOD (bring your own device) trend, organizations are using mobile devices more than ever. Your business is competing in a mobile, technology-driven economy, and you must rely on your mobile workforce to ensure customer satisfaction and product/service innovation. The right mobility solutions ensure secure and simple access to data, tools, and applications from any location. Your vCIO will help you consider applications, support, ownership, security, and communication issues and policies that will ensure your mobile workforce is always productive, and your data is secure.
Cloud Computing, Software as a Service (SaaS) and Virtualization
Software as a Service utilizes a cloud-computing infrastructure to deliver a single application to your employees no matter their location. This is opposed to relying on the traditional one application per desktop. Cloud services are available to your employees via the Internet from a cloud provider’s servers and used instead of your company’s own on-premises servers. Virtualization refers to the creation of virtual servers, desktops, storage devices, applications, and computer network resources. You can virtualize your entire IT infrastructure or just specific aspects of it. Cloud services and virtualization provide easy, quick, scalable access to resources, applications, and services, and simplifies your overall IT infrastructure to promote efficiency.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Enterprise Resource Planning involves the use of business management software that combines a variety of integrated applications to store and manage data for all aspects of your business operations. It includes product planning, manufacturing, marketing, inventory management, shipping, invoicing, accounts receivables and payables, and more. Software as a Service Enterprise Resource Planning (SaaS ERP) supports remote hosting of business IT services. It’s also known as Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (Cloud ERP).
Strategic IT Planning
Strategic IT planning focuses on your organization’s specific needs and how to best use technology to meet them. IT is a strategic capability to be used and integrated into planning and projections with consideration of future IT innovations and business growth. Your vCIO will work with you to determine how technology will help you achieve your business priorities and prepare guidelines and policies that support your vision with the right IT solutions.
Networking: Data and Voice Communications
Data communications refer to the electronic transmission of information for storage and processing, while voice communications refer to systems such as mobile devices and VoIP systems. Your vCIO will help you implement the best communication solutions to keep your organization connected and up and running.
Legacy Application Modernization/Renovation
Legacy application modernization is the process of refactoring, re-purposing, or consolidating legacy software programs to align with a company’s current needs. This enables you to benefit from the advantages of new development without the risk and cost of replacing legacy systems.
Business Intelligence and Analytics for Big Data
Business intelligence, or BI, is a term that refers to a variety of software applications used to analyze an organization’s raw and big data (massive amounts of data). Business analytics is the process of exploring and investigating an organization’s data with emphasis on statistical analysis. This is becoming more important for even small businesses today. They are relying on software solutions like Microsoft Power BI (Business Intelligence) to transform data and create interactive reports to help them analyze data to reach their goals.
Shared Services
Many parts of an organization use the same services and resources. Shared services involve the consolidation of business services and resources used by multiple parts of an organization. For example, with service portfolio management, organizations can define and manage services and resources. By incorporating automation, virtualization, advanced analytics, and other digital technologies into your operations, you can streamline processes. These technologies also may enable you to make better decisions and improve the quality of customer interactions.
As your Virtual CIO we will help you plan for the future of your business.
Good businesses grow, expanding the size and scope of their operation, which in turn requires further resources to support expansion. And let’s face it, growth in the modern era means growing your Information Technology infrastructure because technology is now tightly woven into the fabric of business, from the back office to mobile devices and the cloud.
Strategic IT Planning
Your Virtual CIO should offer Strategic IT consulting and support services to make sure that you keep your technology in line with the scope of your business as it grows and adapts in a competitive world.
Strategic Partnership
You vCIO is not just an IT expert that you hear from over email or phone on occasion. The vCIO is a strategic business expert as well, and wants nothing more than to see your business succeed and develop. As your partner, we can help make your company better by providing a superior and personalized IT support service to ensure your technology always meets the needs of your business goals.
Consultation on Every Business Decision
To ensure that your business reach doesn’t exceed its grasp, we will analyze any proposed business decisions that could affect your IT infrastructure, including its opportunities, risks and shortfalls.
Regular Business Review Meetings
We will maintain an open line of communication with you to stay up to date on the state of existing networks and capital cost planning and budgeting, eventually building to an optimal technology cycle. This will further ensure that your IT infrastructure is always prepared to support your business’ needs.
As Virtual CIO we will help you verify your business’ digital security with a comprehensive assessment of your existing measures.
Are you unsure of your business’ IT infrastructure security? The network that connects your business’ computers deals with sensitive and valuable information and it can be targeted by viruses, worms, spyware and other malicious digital threats.
Security Assessments
As your strategic IT partner, Mosaic will provide security assessment services to examine every part of your network security to make sure that your company’s data is properly protected. In the course of the assessment, we will analyze the following aspects of your systems:
Security Measures
Our assessment will determine the strength of your current passwords, the validity of any firewalls in place, and any implementations of control lists that determine which users have access to sensitive information. By ensuring these security standards are properly configured and up-to-date, your systems will be that much more difficult to compromise.
Reliable Failsafes
Despite the best efforts, even the strongest security measures can be overcome, whether it’s a data breach or an unexpected emergency on your premises. Mosaic will ensure you have regular backups, on and off-site redundancies, which can be relied upon in the case of any disaster.
Comprehensive Maintenance
If your security measures are not updated regularly they can become ineffective quickly. In the course our assessment we make sure that your security settings meet industry standards, that maintenance programming is configured to operate automatically, and that any past employees have been removed from the system (a dangerous error that is often overlooked).
As your Virtual CIO we will help your business prepare for the worst case scenarios and establish a viable Business Continuity strategy.
Technology related emergencies can strike at any time, whether they be malware attacks or system crashes. It’s vital to have a plan in place to make sure that your business can keep unproductive downtime to a minimum.
Business Continuity Planning
We will help you prepare your company for any and all IT emergencies by developing strategic response plans and effective contingencies. A sound, we designed business continuity strategy offers you the following benefits:
Ready For Any Emergency
We can ensure that your business is prepared for any disaster that could affect your IT infrastructure, whether it be a natural occurrence, cyber crime, power outages or human error.
Forward Thinking
By creating policies and procedures, we can help you and your staff operate effectively and efficiently should your business become affected by an emergency of any kind.
Scheduled and Comprehensive Backups
A combination of on-site and off-site backup systems will ensure reliable and consistent data backup and recovery. With this combination of backup technology you are able to restore entire systems and networks at a moment’s notice. Backups of your sensitive data are scheduled, automated and tested, so your data is up to date, secure, and stored both locally onsite and remotely through the Cloud. This technology will protect your business from data loss and ensure that in the event of a disaster, you will be fully operational with little to no down time.
Regularly Tested Systems
By testing the backup systems on a regular basis, we can ensure they are ready for use at the moment they are needed.
Other things to consider
The vCIO is NOT in your office. There is something to be said for being able to walk down the hall and talk face-to-face. If something needs to be fixed and can’t be handled through a remote help desk, it will be important that we have on-site desktop support options. We want to make sure we set the correct expectations because while the vCIO will be actively engaged in the management of your IT infrastructure, the vCIO will not be the one responsible for handling onsite break fix and support issues.
Existing IT staff. If you already have a CIO or other IT staff, the decision to replace them or augment their roles with Managed IT may be a difficult one to make. It’s noteworthy, however, that a vCIO’s primary duty is to provide independent assessment and strategy. They also don’t come with potential associated HR issues, compliance considerations, space requirements or other supporting office needs.
Time to build relationship. As with any business relationship — whether a new employee or vCIO — it takes time to build trust, especially when that person has access to your entire network of data. We want to make sure that you are 100% onboard with this relationship before we get started. We have a proven track record for providing vCIO services and account managers who will be professional, reliable and personable.
Enlisting the help of a vCIO is a big decision. Bringing someone on in the capacity as part of your Managed IT service versus hiring a CIO or IT Manager can benefit your organization in many ways and far outweigh the risks of bringing someone on staff. That said, it’s important to ensure that you taking this on for the right reasons and that our experience, knowledge and dedication will be properly used to help your organization thrive.
Great IT leadership not only fixes problems as they arise, but develops strategy and solutions for long-term situations and questions. A Virtual CIO is essentially an experienced technology service provider who serves as your IT strategist.
Ready to take the next step?
If you’re ready to start your journey and learn more about how our Virtual CIO services and strategic IT planning can help you accomplish your goals and deliver a solid return on investment, we’re ready to join you!
Give us a call at (240) 399-3900, contact us online using the form on this page, or start a conversation with one of our representatives using the Live Chat button on the lower right corner of the screen and we can get started. The process is easy, we will take very good care of you along the way…and you will definitely be pleased and most likely surprised by the results!
