From Buy-in to Roll Out – Switching Your Organization to Offsite Data

If you’re reading this, odds are good that your business is scaling or you have growing concerns over cyber protection and data storage. Moving your data off-site is on your mind.

This obviously represents a big investment financially, and it will take time and resources to transition your day-to-day operations.

Here is a broad view of what you can expect, from discovering the need to training your staff.

1. Need Discovery

The need to move your data off-site can be felt by the front-line employees who are struggling with access or security. However, it needs to be truly recognized by the top level of the company for the initiative to truly start.

This is most often an impactful event such as discovering how much money you’re losing to an old and inefficient system, or a more serious data breach to you or someone else in your industry.

2. C-level Buy-in

If the need is discovered by a CTO or other C-level executive, you can skip this step.

However, if the need is discovered and felt by a lower level (i.e. head of IT), they will have to earn the buy-in from the C-level executives by presenting the business case for this move.

With the green light, the leader if this initiative starts to look at vendors. 

3. Vendor Selection

The leader begins the process of trying to find data center sourcing options that meet their needs and their budget.

This is typically a relatively long and involved sales cycle and may involve multiple site tours, often out of state.

Once you decide on a vendor and sign the dotted line, you now have to sell it to employees.

4. Training and Earning Employee Buy-in

Training your staff on how to access data off-site is not as simple as a PowerPoint presentation and a handout. You need to earn their buy-in and they have to want to use this system for it to be effective and for you to see a clear ROI.

Training needs to focus on the employee benefit and how this will make their job easier. This could include the system making it easier for sales staff to work remotely.

The size of the organization will dictate how this solution is introduced. If you have a large team, you may want to focus on one department or site at a time.

5. Using and Scaling

If you were rolling it out incrementally, you will now continue to do so.

However, if you rolled out company-wide, your employees should now be using the new system and hopefully benefiting from it.

Keep in close contact with your vendor for technical issues, and possibly about the need to scale your package in the near future.

The time-to-value on this may be difficult to chart. However, the return on investment (ROI) should be clear! Your organization should be running more efficiently, or more securely.

If you’re not seeing a clear ROI, you may not have full buy-in from your front-line and they may not have fully embraced the new tech and procedures. If this is the case, you should speak to your vendor right away about up-training!

This should be an investment that pays for itself and has a clear ROI.