How Often Should You Review Your Business IT Strategy? 

How Often Should You Review Your Business IT Strategy? 

One of the very first questions we ask a business when meeting with them for the first time is “When did you last review your IT strategy?” The most common answer to that question is usually “A few years ago.”.

However, the ideal frequency of reviewing your IT strategy is every 3 months as part of a quarterly business review. 

But why? 

Technology changes so fast nowadays that even from one month to the next, new PCs, laptops, and even software solutions are released that could benefit a business. An IT strategy isn’t a “set and forget” document; it’s a living plan that needs regular updates.

Regularly reviewing your business IT strategy enables you to ensure that your technology is aligned with your business growth goals, adapt to emerging trends, and stay protected against increasing cyber threats to UK businesses.

Thankfully, as we spoke about in our recent article about the benefits of having a vCIO associated with your business, we can support your business through these regular reviews to ensure that your business is able to keep up and adapt to these constant changes in line with your business growth goals, as well as changes within your market. 

Why Do Regular IT Strategy Reviews Matter? 

Business needs can change dramatically in a short time, especially as you grow and adapt to changes within your market. But similarly, technology can also change dramatically in an equally short period of time, just look at how quickly AI is advancing. If you only review your IT strategy once every few years, you risk falling behind your competitors, missing critical issues, or just missing ways in which you can make your business more productive and efficient.

By checking in quarterly, you can catch successes or failures early and adjust course promptly. As SME Strategy mention in their blog, “If your organisation reviews its strategy once every year or two, it’s harder to notice quickly if something isn’t working. Quarterly reviews, on the other hand, let you assess metrics every three months and make timely adjustments”. In other words, frequent reviews keep your IT strategy more proactive to changes in your business and your industry, rather than reactive. 

These regular touchpoints between business leaders, key stakeholders, and your IT management ensure your IT initiatives stay on track with evolving business priorities and account for any new technological developments that have emerged that could benefit your business or security threats that need to be taken into consideration.  

IT is more than just something your business uses; it is the backbone of your business operations, and it is important that it is carefully monitored as such.


Just as you’d review finances or KPIs regularly, your IT and cyber security posture should be reviewed; this way, there are no surprises, and your tech remains an enabler of growth, not a bottleneck. But what should you be reviewing? 

What are the key parts of an effective IT strategy?


So, we have concluded that reviewing your IT strategy regularly is important... but what should an IT strategy actually include?


You may think, “My PC’s and Laptops, obviously.”, and of course, you are right, but it also covers much more than just your everyday hardware. 

At a high level, it’s a roadmap for how your business uses all of its different technologies to achieve its growth goals. Let's take a look at some of the other considerations:

Business Growth Alignment

Your IT/Technology and Cyber Security should align with your overall business goals and growth plans. Any technology you use within your business should directly support these goals.

For example, if your strategy is to expand e-commerce sales, your IT plan might include scaling your web infrastructure or adopting new digital marketing tools.

Or, if you are a manufacturer, you may look at ways to bring in new technologies to automate some of your manufacturing processes, or link in with your central product ordering system to reduce potential errors between the ordering and manufacturing processes.

If your business tech doesn’t align with your business strategy, you’re already at a disadvantage. Conducting reviews with a vCIO allows your business to ensure that you either have, or are looking to employ, the right technology solutions to support your goals. 

Up-to-Date Infrastructure & Equipment

Do you know if your PC’s and Laptops are up to date? What about your Firewall? Or even your Wi-Fi Access Points and Network Switches?  

It is essential that businesses have a strategy of regularly maintaining, upgrading and updating their hardware, network infrastructure, and devices. Outdated IT infrastructure can not only impact your business productivity, and by extension, potentially drive customers away, but can also present significant cyber security threats.

Research also shows that legacy hardware can potentially lead to hundreds of thousands of pounds in IT downtime for small to medium-sized businesses. Your business IT strategy should include hardware lifecycle management to ensure that your business is budgeting for upgrades to update them in plenty of time before old systems fail, avoiding costly downtime.

For example, if you are still using PCs/Laptops on an older operating system, it is important to ensure that these devices are either updated or replaced before they reach the end of life. Note that Windows 10 reaches end-of-life on October 14th 2025, meaning no more security updates, which presents its own risks. 

Cloud and Software Strategy

Cloud Services and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions, likely your business uses one or more of these, and your business IT strategy must evaluate which applications and cloud platforms best fit your needs (for email, finances, document creation, file collaboration, CRM, and much more), and ensure that your licenses are managed efficiently. Many businesses waste money on underused software that is not fit for purpose, or they are not using it to their full potential, or even just paying for more licences than they require. For example, studies show that over 50% of software licenses go unused on average. Our vCIO works with businesses to ensure that they have regular audits of their software assets, so that they can uncover opportunities to streamline costs or adopt more effective solutions. 

Business Continuity & Data Backup

As we have mentioned previously, a comprehensive IT strategy isn’t just about new tech; it is a holistic approach to safeguard your business operations and must include disaster recovery, incident response and business continuity planning. This means having data backup solutions (cloud backups, off-site storage) and plans to keep the business running during outages, in the event of hardware failure, or cyber incidents, is critical. If a server crashes, a hard drive fails, or a ransomware attack strikes, how quickly could you recover? 5 minutes? 2 hours? 1 day? And, how much would this downtime cost your business? 

Testing your backups and recovery process should be part of your routine to mitigate downtime risk. Businesses that plan for continuity can greatly reduce the impact of unforeseen disruptions. 

Cyber Security

Cyber security is an absolute must for every business. Not only should your business have its own Cyber Security Strategy, but this should be tied deeply into your overall IT strategy. 

This includes ensuring that your business is using modern security tools (firewalls, SASE, endpoint detection & response/EDR, intrusion detection, zero trust, active email threat protection, etc.), as well as enforcing best practices like access controls and encryption, and educating your employees.  

Humans are often the weakest link; a comprehensive IT/cyber plan should involve regular employee training on cyber security best practices, modern threats, how to spot them and even prevent avoidable breaches.  

It’s important to establish these robust security policies and an incident response plan to protect your business from the growing cyber threats we are facing (increasing from 2.39 million attacks on UK businesses in 2022 to 8.58 million in 2024). Alarmingly, only 22% of UK businesses have a formal cyber incident response plan in place, leaving 78% unprepared. Cyber security is an essential part of every IT strategy, ensuring that you can protect your business’s data, reputation, and continuity. 

These key focus areas form the backbone of any successful IT strategy. Investing in each of these areas and consulting with experienced professionals allows you to spend more time growing your business instead of worrying about the tech that supports it. 

How can a vCIO support your IT Strategy? 

Developing and regularly updating an IT strategy can be challenging, especially if you do not have the technical knowledge to be able to effectively plan an IT or cyber security strategy. 

This is where a virtual CIO (vCIO) service can be especially valuable for small to medium-sized businesses. Our vCIO is essentially an outsourced Chief Information Officer, an experienced IT professional who works closely to understand your business, what is important to you, how you operate, and what your plans for the future are. They work closely with you to build and oversee your IT strategy, architecture, and policies, as well as introduce forward-looking ideas, researching new tech trends or tools that could give you an edge, and help you plan for the future.


Another big role of our vCIO is to coordinate regular Quarterly and Annual Business Reviews (QBRs & ABRs). These regular meetings cover how well your IT is performing, any incidents or support issues, and strategic updates, essentially making sure your IT strategy is continuously reviewed and adjusted every quarter.  

However, these reviews are also options to discuss ongoing IT projects, address any new pain points, set priorities for the next quarter, and ensure that your IT strategy is benefiting your overall business growth strategy.  

Partner with us for continued success 

Regularly reviewing your IT strategy, at least every 3 months, is essential to ensure that your IT aligns with your business growth goals. However, it is more important to partner with specialists such as ourselves, with a vCIO who is dedicated to working with you to understand what those goals are, and look at the bigger picture and how your IT strategy can help you plan ahead for your future and achieve these goals. 

To find out more about how we can support your business and help you grow through effective IT and cyber security solutions, book a free consultation today.