I am usually sceptical of programmes offered by the Enterprise Board, but in the past two months I have had two great experiences with the West Cork Enterprise Board.
They have been offering a Tech Check service for over a year now. You pay the WCEB €150 and they assign an IT professional to come in and audit your business’s use of technology. Whilst I was sceptical about how it would go — being fairly untrusting of many ‘IT guys’ — but I did think that it may be useful and was worth the fee. In fact, I took it so lightly that I signed up a year ago and didn’t get around to actually submitting payment until now.
I was curious to see who would be coming out and was pleasantly surprised to find that the auditor was someone that I was familiar with. I don’t know if it’s appropriate to mention names, so he will remain anonymous. We spent three hours reviewing the technology we were currently using and what I thought we needed for now and for future growth of the business. Even during that initial session he provided me with a lot of excellent information on ways to improve our security, back up systems and use of email — all mainly free or cheap methods.
I think many people feel that the IT professional doing the Tech Check will try to sell their own services and maybe suggest pricey things we don’t really need. Our auditor doesn’t actually offer IT services like that and most of his recommendations were affordable and easily do-able.
The written report I receieved a few days later was detailed and contained step by step instructions to implement the suggestions.
I would recommend that all businesses take up the Tech Check service while it is still being offered.
The other good experience I had with the WCEB involves a Grow Your Business Workshop — and I’ll get into that in a later post.
