IT Strategy & Budgetting

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IT Strategy & Budgetting

IT Strategy

Acorn’s approach to our partnerships is highly strategic.
IT is a support service for any organization, meant to be an enabler to help the organizations reach their strategic goals.
Strategy to Acorn means the following sequence:

Strategy

IT needs to support the goals of the organization. Our job is to recognize those goals and prioritize technical initiatives to help achieve those goals.

Expertise

Branding Services

Our team of 73 employees is large enough to emulate an Enterprise IT Department but small enough to provide boutique service.

Experience

We've been supporting government and quasi-government agencies for decades and have fine-tuned our approach over the years resulting in a battery of satisfied customers.

Acorn

Communication

is among the most important components of a successful partnership. Below is our typical communication cadence:

Budget Meetings: Annual
Quarterly Reviews: Quarterly
Service Reviews: Monthly or bi-weekly
Project Meetings: As needed

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Software

We've invested in state-of-the-art IT Service Management Software (ITSM) so you don't have to. These tools include:

Datto: RMM for reporting/ management
Auvik: for Network Reporting/Management
IT Glue: for documentation
Brightguage: for Reporting
ScalePad: for Asset Management
SmartSheet: for Project Management

Acorn

Standards

We've adopted the most effective and time-tested standards for IT:

ITIL: Standards for Help Desk
COBIT: for Enterprise IT Department Management
NIST: for Security

IT budgeting and forecasting

Our customers love the 5-year budgets we prepare for them annually. The budgets are extremely comprehensive and cover: Hardware Renewals (including labor costs), Licensing renewals, domain and SSL renewals, Project Initiatives, Hosted Services, and Security Initiatives. Our cost projections typically are accurate +/- 5%. These budgets are useful in giving transparency to future spendings.

Innovative technology products & services

Since technology is a core part of our business, we dedicate an immense number of resources to educational endeavors including peer groups, ongoing training, and industry conventions. It is imperative that we know what’s coming around the bend and educate our customers along the way. Our annual budget meetings and quarterly reviews are a great way for Acorn to introduce new technologies to our City partners. Here, we collectively work new solutions into future budgets. Acorn’s R&D team reports into the VP of Technical Operations and Cybersecurity. This team continuously looks out for the best products and services for Acorn and its customers. New technologies, services or ideas are brought to Acorn’s governance team for review, and productization.