Pricing IT Audits by Joshua Feinberg
Before you start offering IT audits, you may have questions about how to price them. IT audit prices should be based on your rate, but you should offer a discount just to get a foot in the door. Your Hourly Rate Is Your Guide In order to create your price for IT audits, you need to take your... An IT audit will help you discover your prospect's biggest issues and help them organize and make sense of what he needs to address. ... Even if you don't recover more than 50 to 75 percent of your regular fees, you can count it as part of the cost of sales.

IT Audits: What Are Your Clients Looking For? by Joshua Feinberg
When you conduct IT audits, you will want to see what you can solve for your clients. You will want to see what problems they have and what you can do about them. In this article, you'll learn the kinds of questions that they will want answered during IT audits Questions Lead to the Needs... "What’s the best product and platform for us?" "What’s the best value?" All of these questions can be answered with a simple needs analysis with your IT audit. ... Coordinating with outside vendors for an industry specific package installation Network installation and maintenance Customers Want...

IT Service Agreements: The Offer is About Timing by Joshua Feinberg
The best time to offer IT service agreements to clients is immediately following emergency service calls. Since you've just rescued a client, you are in their best graces, and they are at their highest point of liking you, knowing you and trusting you, three critical elements that make up a good... The thing to do if this happens is to take a lot of notes on the client's business and suggest an IT audit. ... The IT audit will give you an excellent “in” for IT service agreements. ... There could be a range of things wrong with the provider: it doesn't deliver the promised product; it has a...

IT Audits and Licensing Issues by Joshua Feinberg
Software licensing is a major issue during IT audits, and if you find any software licensing problems or concerns while conducting an audit, you should note it in your report. You should also present it to the client while you are sharing your report and ask for documents that prove ownership. ... Licensing compliance is something that needs to be in your service contract, and should be in your service contract as an immediate fix. ... Or maybe someone in the past thought they might want to use it and obtained a pirated copy.

IT Audits: A Checklist by Joshua Feinberg
IT audits need to be as comprehensive as possible. To ensure you hit every area you need to during your IT audits, review this checklist. • IT Audits - Physical Security: To ensure that appropriate physical controls are in place to secure technology assets (servers, networking and... • IT Audits - Software Licensing Compliance: To ensure that all software usage is in compliance with licensing agreements, and that appropriate licensing records are maintained. ... • IT Audits - Documentation: To ensure that all systems, procedures, and policies are properly documented and updated, including...

IT Service Agreements: When To Offer Them by Joshua Feinberg
Right after emergency service calls is a good time to offer IT service agreements. You’ve just saved the day and you’re at the high point. Customers have to like, know, and trust you. After an emergency, they love you! They love you because you saved the day; they now know you of course because... The IT audit is a great segue into proposing IT service agreements. ... If they have agreed to an audit, they are more than likely looking for someone that they can call on a regular basis. ... In this case, your customer realizes that they are not happy with their current technology provider.

IT Audits: Your Prospects by Joshua Feinberg
IT audits are really where you’re going with the sales call to a new prospect. Unless they have an emergency that needs urgent attention and they’re really specific about it, you need to “push” IT audits. That will get the ball rolling with IT services. ... Charge for Longer Assessments That definitely should be billable and that should definitely be in the context of IT audits or tech assessments and not be given away for free. ... Keep in mind, however, that spending more than a half hour, where you’re starting to actually look at hubs, at switches, at how the Cat 5 stuff is laid out,...

IT Audits: Documenting Licensing Issues by Joshua Feinberg
One of the biggest issues you will run across during IT Audits is software licensing. If you find any such issues during IT audits, note them in your report. You might want to say something like: “These are deficiencies that I have found. Do you have the documents around to prove you own it?”... Licensing compliance is definitely something that should be in your service contract. ... Or someone two years ago thought they might want to use it, so they picked up a pirated copy. ... Sometimes businesses so underutilize software, some programs on a PC can be safely removed because they’re not...

Secure File Transfer Using SSH Plus Additional Audit & Automation - FSA Reporting by Tim Adams
In order to meet regulatory and corporate compliance requirements reporting members will require a cost effective solution that may be installed at one side of the data transfer without being tied to any proprietary protocol. Considerations include: - is it designed for use in most enterprise... The current choice of tools for SFTP transfers is very large, but generally these are designed for interactive use, and provide little in the way of automated operations or audit trail for the client. ... It is designed to be easily configured for future systems from these and other regulators...

IT Audits: Your Existing Customers by Joshua Feinberg
Look among your existing customers to determine who are good candidates for IT audits. You can do this based on the number of PCs they have. Generally, businesses that have more than five systems are really good possibilities for IT audits. You will be checking around for UPSs and data line... If you say it’s regularly $350, but now through a certain date it is discounted to $199 and due to demand, is limited to only the first 25 customers. ... Make your IT audits at least have the perception of being discounted and put some kind of deadline on it.