Alignment

Synchronizing Technology & Business to Drive Your Organization's Goals.

EmPower begins with a process called Alignment. Alignment consists of two parts: Technical Alignment and Business Alignment. Technical Alignment is an ongoing process of reviewing, configuring and implementing technology based upon recognized best-practices. Business Alignment is the process of making sure that your technology aligns to your business goals to truly “EmPower” your team to be more productive.

Technical Alignment

The EmPower alignment process begins with what we call Technical Alignment. Technical Alignment is an ongoing review, configuration, and implementation of technology based upon recognized best practices.

A Standards-Based Approach

EpiOn maintains an ever-evolving library of over 1,200 standards and best practices related to factors such as the configuration, performance, operation, maintenance, recoverability and capacity of technology. These standards are based upon:

• Industry best practices as established by standards groups (i.e. NIST, ITIL, ISO, etc.),
• Manufacturer’s recommendations (i.e. Dell, Microsoft, Citrix, etc.),
• Regulatory compliance requirements (i.e. HIPAA, SOX, PCI-DSS, GLBA, etc.), and
• EpiOn’s own experience over the last 20+ years.

EmPower includes a comprehensive suite of tools and resources that are commonly referred to as Managed Services. These Managed Services deliver a turn-key IT environment built upon security, performance, data protection, and issue avoidance. The right environment, along with proper user education and training, turns your technology into a productivity “lever” for your business.

Your Technical Alignment Manager

As an EmPower customer, EpiOn assigns a dedicated Technical Alignment Manager (TAM) to your account. The TAM conducts monthly onsite reviews to measure alignment to standards, update our documentation, and to assist with more strategic issues such as disaster recovery planning. Based upon their deep understanding of your environment, your TAM serves as the technical liaison internally to our Service Desk to help resolve more advanced technical issues.

When misalignments are identified, we take one of two paths:

• Minor issues that don’t really impact your users are resolved by the TAM or our Service Desk as part of your Unlimited Support plan.
• When an issue might affect your users’ day-to-day use of the system (i.e. greater security restrictions) or require a capital investment on your part, it is elevated to you for a business decision prior to any action.

Business Alignment

Technology alone is just an overhead expense. But technology that’s aligned with your business goals to truly “EmPower” your team to be more productive – that’s an investment. Business Alignment is all about helping you develop a business-driven IT strategy, assess risk, and establish budgets to ensure a return on that investment. 

Your Virtual CIO

Large corporations typically employ a Chief Information Officer (CIO) who oversees the strategic direction of the people, systems, and processes required to run an effective network. Unfortunately, smaller organizations often lack the scale to afford such a role and therefore neglect the strategic planning required for a high functioning environment. With the EmPower program, EpiOn delivers a dedicated, “virtual” CIO (vCIO) to fulfill this role.

IT Strategy and Planning

Over time, your vCIO develops a deep understanding of your company from a business perspective. Your goals, strategies, opportunities, and threats. Those factors, along with recommendations from your TAM, allow us to craft a plan that moves the needle for your business. After all, technology should do one of three things for your business:

1. lower your operating costs,
2. improve employee productivity, or
3. create a sustained competitive advantage.

When IT Matters...

If IT is mission-critical to your operation, we would love to chat with you.

At EpiOn, our core mission is to EmPower people to achieve more through technology. If IT matters to the operations of your organization, then EmPower is all about delivering a better outcome. Be it in partnership with your current IT staff or as your turn-key, outsourced IT department, we would appreciate the opportunity to learn more about your needs.

To learn more about EmPower's Alignment process, please use the form on the right or give us a call at (931) 526-3742.  We would love to answer any questions you might have.