About Georg Dauterman:
Georg believes in the fusion of technology and creativity. With a background in both fields, he started his career in IT departments of publishing and advertising agencies, realizing the critical need for tech aligned with business goals. Joining Valiant in 2004, Georg’s expertise and passion for efficiency brought industry recognition. He holds a history degree from Queens College and serves on Datto’s Global Partner Advisory Board. Beyond his leadership role, Georg enjoys exploring culinary skills, fitness, and outdoor adventures with his family.
About Megan Quick:
Megan is a member of the Valiant Marketing & Sales team, assisting in demonstrating the value of our services and ensuring positive experiences for prospective clients. When not working with technology, she is a theater production manager and performer, producing her own comedy shows, and is an avid writer. Megan has a B.A. in Theater from Sewanee: The University of The South.
Megan Quick:
Hello and welcome back to the Creative Stack, a podcast about the intersection of creativity and information technology. I am your host, Megan Quick, and our topic today, folks, is a topic that I've spent endless hours talking about, refining, philosophizing about. Our topic today is, of course, IT assessments. And as always, I am joined By my esteemable co host, George Dowderman, the president of Valiant Technology. Hi, George. How are you doing today?
Georg Dauterman:
I am great and I'm super excited about this topic. It's a close to home. It's a best practice that really done well makes it's a it's a win win win for everybody involved. Done poorly or not done at all, the outcome is a little more fungible.
Megan Quick:
I risk being a little absolutist, but I do think we could organize successful l relationships and not successful relationships with prospects in who did the IT assessment and who who did not.
Georg Dauterman:
A hundred percent. The more yeah, I mean, the more you know about a place who it it really is the walk, crawl, run, crawl, walk, run mindset. It's a it's a low it's a l it's yeah, the other way. it's it's it's a low low risk high reward project. it's it's how you know what you're gonna be doing for next year, two years, three years in a relationship. And
Megan Quick:
Yes, there you go.
Georg Dauterman:
At the end of the day, everyone feels a lot better because, you know, most folks who work in IT don't like the unknown. Well, actually, well, I should sit back. Most humans don't like the unknown. And even with as knowing as much as you can know, there's always gonna be unknowns. But if you're walking in someplace blind, it's really hard to do a great job. It's really hard to be results oriented when you don't know what the
Megan Quick:
Mm-hmm.
Georg Dauterman:
parameters of on the ground look like. You if you don't no idea what you're gonna be dealing with, how can you guarantee a result?
Megan Quick:
How yeah, how can you find the treasure if you don't have the map with the, you know, X marks the spot? and George, with all of that, I could you give folks a broad overview? And I I know we talked about IT assessments probably the first meeting you and I ever had when I joined the no, truly it might have been the first thing we talked about, but can you if if you had to explain to someone who just had no idea what it was, I know the title can give it it gives it away a little, but I I
Georg Dauterman:
Right. It is, it is.
Megan Quick:
Just you talk to the person on the street, explain to them what an IT assessment is. Yeah.
Georg Dauterman:
Sure. So in in in very broad terms, IT assessment is a review and a documentation of what the infrastructure security and somewhat the applications of an IT infrastructure environment looks like for a company. It also gives a technology provider and the company a sense of where they should focus their energies and and and and work on what they need when needs to get work done. And it really gives you a point in time may more simply put, it's a point in time snapshot of the environment, what's what's happening that may be at risk and where improvements can be made in the future. It's the basis from which you base almost all of your future work on.
Megan Quick:
Mm-hmm.
Georg Dauterman:
Good example would be in the middle of your IT assessment. Someone mentions, hey, we're gonna be moving in three months. Whoa, hold on a second. What are we doing here? Or they could say, Yeah, we have that, but no one ever uses it. And so you're like, okay, so well, why do you have it then? Like why wasn't decommissioned is a reason. So there's a lot of reasons why, but really what it it it's a place, it's a it's a method for understanding what's what's happening in the environment and it allows the provider or
Megan Quick:
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Georg Dauterman:
the assessor really to give the client a sense of w what's what needs to be d what current status and and and and depending on how the IC IT assessments configured, the future state. And so, you know, not every well, I know for us, many times people come, you know, we have inbound leads and we talk to people referrals and we can tell without an assessment they're gonna be a good fit for what we provide. They might need some different That's what I mean. But when a customer is or a prospect is in good is is a good sort of lines up to the the size companies and industries and a lot of factors, IT system really helps us dial in what we're gonna do for them. And it really takes away a lot of the stress from the valiant team. Not that you not that not that the customer cares per se about us, but
Megan Quick:
Mm-hmm.
Georg Dauterman:
It it it allows us to lay out a a really robust roadmap and stick to it and it's something you hold us accountable to and we can hold you accountable to. It's an agreed upon outcome.
Megan Quick:
Well, and not to go back to my old days of of talking to folks about it, but I would also I can honestly say the assessment we put together was always in and of itself a valuable thing to have. So sometimes we figured out we figure out through the IT assessment process, okay, you might not be the right person for us, but or we might not have the the best chemistry. But now you
Georg Dauterman:
Correct. Solution f yeah, for you. A solution, yeah.
Megan Quick:
you have a comprehensive document to to know exactly what to do next. Yeah.
Georg Dauterman:
Yeah, it it's it really helps you to sort of know where you are. I mean I mean I think that for most companies and most people, you know, IT, especially the security, is is is is sort of like a one breath nebulous black box, next breath completely like overwhelming. you know, I just wanna deal with this thing because I don't know what's going on with it. Or it's a real operational headache. And you really just wanna identify all those pieces of it and and this has been allows us to sort of pro
Megan Quick:
Yeah.
Georg Dauterman:
build some prioritization. and and it and for a customer, not only do they get to know what's going on, but maybe a little bit of a preview of how we work. Which is which is if you think about it from a perspective when most of our customers are in the you know five plus year range, you really want to kinda know once again, you will kind of maybe want to go on a date before you get married. You know? And
Megan Quick:
Yeah, that's true. I know we would always it's funny during the process. I'm like, God, this is so f especially if I was dating, I'm like, this is so funny how similar this is to just meeting people. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Georg Dauterman:
This is like the meeting s yeah, it's it's like well it's like meeting in a coffee shop, you know, where it's like no pressure. And you know, it's the stakes are fairly low. Are we are we aligned? It's really important. Critical part of marriage or relationships.
Megan Quick:
Figuring out values, figuring out what where do you see yourself? Yeah, like do you want kids? No, I'm kidding. we become a we become a relationship advice podcast too. I think we could using using IT, things we've learned from IT and applying them to relationships. all right, George, actually on in that vein, I'm gonna ask maybe a spicy question. now
Georg Dauterman:
Low space. Yeah.
Megan Quick:
There could be some folks who hear about the IT assessment. I've gotten it where they go, Why am I paying for a quote? What do you say to that? Yeah.
Georg Dauterman:
to I that's a great question. I say that's a great question. I can give you a quote today. I'll give you a quote right now. Top of my head, I can do the math. It's not complicated. I have a little sp I have somewhat robust spreadsheet. That's not that's not what you're paying for. what you're paying for is the clarification of the systems and tools that are in in the environment in a report report format.
Megan Quick:
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Georg Dauterman:
From an outside sort of isol you know, independent party that's going to really look at it and give you a clearer picture of what's happening there. I've done many assessments where I I've gone and like, I'm gonna just stop right here because this is really bad. there's no backup or there's or there's no security in place, or you know, they're they're they they have no no governance in any way, shape or form. a lot of what our assessments are now are looking at the the the the process that they're using within their company to run their technology and govern it and manage it. And and you know, w I just did one not that long ago and and, you know, they were very like pretty very successful company, right in our target sort of customer profile, but they've never had IT before. And they had pretty big size and they had nothing in place that would even allow them to have any clar clarity on what's happening. But so the assessment was really helpful because it gave them some clear a clear picture of what was deficient. And and a lot of what we do is not just stuff we make up, which is sort of looks that way. No, well, deeper than well, deeper than that. I mean, really what it comes out to every our assessments, much like our
Megan Quick:
We really try not to make things up. We don't.
Georg Dauterman:
manner services are aligned to the NIST CF, CSF. which is no n no no NIST. So NIST is a National Institute of Standards and Technology. think what weights and measures and time and and it's sort of like a government body. They run they run a bunch of different tooling for being consistent. It was developed during the late end of the nineteenth century for commerce, or as part of commerce department.
Megan Quick:
Do you mind explaining to folks what the NIST CF
Georg Dauterman:
And the idea here is that really you have a consistent methodology to do a thing. And so they have a bunch of different technology standards. And the one that fits sort of best, we think, with small businesses is called NISCSF, which is a more of a descriptive standard than prescriptive. Like what I mean by that is that it's like you should have a policy for this, not your policy needs to be this. It's you should have a security tool that allow alerts you and logs, not this security tool at this level. So very important. So our all of our all of our assessments and basically all of our meta services are are sort of built around that NISCSF mindset and sort of this guidance. we don't work with customers that are very heavily regulated or generally generally not as regulated as some you know, it's a mix, but you know, this is gives us a good place to to gauge. people against or organizations against.
Megan Quick:
That that is I think really helpful and I also think just I the public knowing about NIST, you can you can go on like you can look it up and reference it yourself. Yeah, it's free.
Georg Dauterman:
Mm-hmm. yeah. It's it's free it's f I as an American taxpayer, that's your you're right. You you paid for you paid for that. and that standard is that standard is quite good. It's a little it's a little confusing at first when you first look at it, but it's it really it's broken down in some in some in in six phases. It's very clearly defined, you know, ranging from you know, everything from inventory through recovering from an incident.
Megan Quick:
Yeah. Yeah.
Georg Dauterman:
And it's it's a really solid way of working. And our assessment uses that as our basis of questions and and and just a a a starting point really.
Megan Quick:
so George, building off the assessment in general, and thank you so much for answering that question. Now we talk a lot about onboardings and where do you s what's the difference between a great onboarding and a comprehensive assessment, I guess? Yeah.
Georg Dauterman:
two two incredibly different things that that on the surface looks look very similar but they're very different and their their outcome is different. Assessment is a point in time snapshot of environment to understand what's happening inside of it. The IT onboarding is putting in place the tools, systems, processes and solutions to allow a company to be managed by a managed service provider or IT provider. very different so part of the onboarding may be an information gathering component, but the real work and meat and potatoes the onboarding is really you know, making sure that each system is conforming to our our standard and our process and our policies. It's making sure that the things that we think are critical, which are based in this is a CSF, so it's not making them up. are are happening. And that could be everything from backups to patches to to multi-factor authentication and enforcement. And an assessment, we're just seeing if you have it or you don't. Not we're not I'm not trying to enforce it. I'm not trying to make sure it happens. I'm just telling you yes or no.
Megan Quick:
We're doing the like the audit, if you will. We are giving you the picture that and also, George, how many times did you and I get on a call with a prospect and they the phrase I would hear is like, I just wanna know what we have. Cause yeah.
Georg Dauterman:
Sure, it happens all the time. I mean and they're you know, the maximum in all cybersecurity is you can't protect what you don't know. And most companies don't know what they have. you know, even us we product you know, we we we work on our own cyber security to some degree, we have outside people as well to help us, but Just stop and think how many applications you use in a given day and how and how dependent you may be on them for your operations. Think about the people in your environment. Think about it. So there's there's a lot of complexity and a lot of pieces that things can go really wrong. And you just want to know about them in advance. It's r really and so the assessment is a great way to start understanding that. And the more comprehensive an assessment is, the better more clarity you'll have. The other piece of an assessment
Megan Quick:
Yeah.
Georg Dauterman:
That's really important for the way we do it is that is that it is the basis for the roadmap that we're gonna build for customer. If if we're gonna go forward working on them. These are our recommendations. this is like having your house inspected, same thing. They're like there's water in the basement, you gotta fix that. You know, there's a leak the roof is leaking. there's the electrical outlet issue, whatever it is. And we're gonna identify that and give you a list and then put in prioritization. sometimes depending on the customer, we might be doing all that on the onboarding. Some of it maybe take us a year to get done. It just depends on time, money and availability.
Megan Quick:
Did you? Yeah, and I think the IT assessment allows us to be everyone always talks about transparency, you know? It's like just be transparent, just be transparent. But transparency actually takes some expertise. Like you have to be able, like you were saying, prioritize and then say, Okay, let's communicate what's important for you as a company. What do we think is you you know, you guys have to put multi-factor authentication on all of your accounts. That just has to happen. And I mean, how many times have we had that conversation? And we can give people a realistic timeline for all those things. I I have it with my friends. I go, hey
Georg Dauterman:
I I I might have had I might have had it earlier this week. So it's it's actually really interesting. It's it's not the end all be all solution, but it's part of the it's part of the solution. It's important part of it. Yeah. No, not at all.
Megan Quick:
It's like having a password now. It's like it's yeah, it's not extraneous anymore. or never was. so George, we work with folks who are hybrid, fully in office, fully remote, and we have done IT assessments for all of those kinds of companies. What's the difference between doing an IT assessment for someone who's fully remote versus a company that's in office or hybrid?
Georg Dauterman:
Mm-hmm. All of them. Right. So obviously the not obviously it's probably not obvious, but shouldn't be obvious at all. Yeah, you've been doing a long time. So really the the big I mean, obviously a c a company that's a hundred percent remote doesn't have a network or physical infrastructure in its environment. It's relying on either co working space or home network, which is sort of out of the purview of most managed service providers. so when you're doing that that
Megan Quick:
That's it's obvious to you. You've been doing it twenty years. That's all. Yeah.
Georg Dauterman:
assessment a lot of it revolves around governance, security, manageability of the environment and operations. How how do people get hired? How do people get fired? How do people get, you know, how do people leave the organization? All that sort of how do you onboard people? there's all kind of same things, but they're different in some ways, how they all operate. how do you how do you purchase equipment? How does it get to the employees? So there's a lot of stuff that happens around there that that's And then really understanding that the the in person visit is that plus another complexity, which is physical infrastructure network. And then it gets even more complex that they have a physical server, which we're seeing less and less of, but they're there, they're out there, much more you know, less less than you think more than you think street companies still have physical environments that they're physical servers or things that have to be powered and protected.
Megan Quick:
Mm-hmm.
Georg Dauterman:
in some network closet or server room. So it's it's it's really common. and you what you're doing is you add on. And one of the things that we found was really critical, if they're if they are managing their own infrastructure or have or someone is manage or have their own infrastructure is a Wi Fi survey. We found the Wi Fi survey was a critical thing. It's a it's it looks simple on the surface. Wi Fi is magic and anyone who doesn't think it's magic, not paying attention, it's a really complex process. radios and and frequency and spectrum. And you really need to tune it here in New York because of the overlapping channels. Just you know, open up your your Wi Fi on your computer and take a look. There's hundreds if not thousands of SSIDs or signals from other Wi Fi so networks.
Megan Quick:
Yeah, I've I've been with our we have two people trained on doing the Wi Fi survey and I've gone on customer calls and walked around with them and got to see the very cool maps where you can see where Wi Fi is covering and often it's not covering in the CEO's office because it's in the corner. The irony. Yeah.
Georg Dauterman:
Yeah. in the corner or there's glass, iron. Yeah, I mean there's a hundred reasons why you know it doesn't work. Not a hundred. And and and and as no no no it's it's it's it's just like one of those things that is it when it's not working right, you really notice it it's a real pain in the butt. All the time.
Megan Quick:
Yeah, and it's yeah, go on, sorry. everything falls apart. Also, almost everyone is using Wi Fi now. Yeah. Even though we do recommend a wired connection.
Georg Dauterman:
is every wire connection takes the load off more of the Wi Fi, but that's a whole other thing. W w actually that's a great episode. That's a good one.
Megan Quick:
We we'll do an episode about that. Actually we should. Yeah. Everyone you got to see this how the sausage is made. Yeah.
Georg Dauterman:
This is yes, exactly the the the creative process. but but the but yeah the the really what it comes down to is you want to make sure that thing is the the Wi Fi is tuned for the right number people, bandwidth, and the environment. And then that's a critical step in our both our assessment and if needed our onboarding to r to get it to perform correctly.
Megan Quick:
Awesome. Thank you so much for answering that as well. now I I love doing these slight role reversals, George, because I think when clients or prospects or folks who are out there who realize they need an IT assessment or they need IT support, it's it can be almost not scary, but maybe overwhelming to be like, who do I talk to and how do I know I'm talking to the right provider? I'm not saying there are grifters out there, but there's there are people who are more suited to certain c responsibilities and people who say they're suited to them who are not. That's what I'll say. So what are some of the questions, like three or four questions a a pro a person looking for IT support could ask the the person offering this IT assessment? Yeah.
Georg Dauterman:
Sure, a g great question is how do you how what will be the result of the assessment? Do you have any samples? Can I see it or just walk me through it? What's the process that you follow? Is it disruptive? How does it work? I r I I already have an IT company, how should I appro approach them? that's actually a question reverse question. but
Megan Quick:
We've been part of it. Uh-huh.
Georg Dauterman:
I've been part of that one. I I I think you can say that you know, most people if they're having an assessment done, you know, obviously there's a reason why they're doing the assessment, but it you really you know, you want to ask actually you you wanna ask, what if I do have an MSP, what do I do? And you know, there's different levels of assessment. The best one is one where you're just saying, Yes, we're having an assessment done. This is our the company doing the assessment and
Megan Quick:
Mm-hmm.
Georg Dauterman:
Please cooperate with them, which is usually the best outcome. And the other question should be, how many of these do how many of these do you do in a given year? How many have you done? That's really important because I know myself I'm constantly tuning this process because it's it changes on the ground all the time.
Megan Quick:
Mm-hmm, uh-huh. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. George, I'm gonna take one second. Will you check the connection of your mic? Yeah, it's getting a little fuzzy. It just now.
Georg Dauterman:
Yeah. Therefore weird. How about that now?
Megan Quick:
Try to unplug it and replug in.
Georg Dauterman:
How about now?
Megan Quick:
Here move your hands away. That here, keep talking, sorry.
Georg Dauterman:
Do you hear me? What about that? I see a big pop on the thing.
Megan Quick:
Yeah. It it's just it's like it's breaking up a little. But tr here, try again.
Georg Dauterman:
Okay. How about now?
Megan Quick:
Maybe I'm so sorry, George. that sounded okay. And Rob, if you know what this is, let us know. we'll try to just finish the episode. Hi, Rob, talking to you from the past. All right. I'm gonna also I'll I'll clap, I guess. Rob, let me know. I'll I'll actually email him about this, but just so he knows. All right. well, George, thank you so much for answering that question. And as we as we wrap up.
Georg Dauterman:
No, it's okay. Okay. Hey Rob. Yeah, sorry. Future Rob.
Megan Quick:
now IT problems can be overwhelming for a lot of companies. They they don't know where to begin because their expertise is in the mission of their company, right? It's not in IT. So we created the assessment as the first step to make folks feel less overwhelmed. It's one of the things. if someone even want to do a mini assessment to under like maybe one they could just it it or they look around the office when they and they go, What can I do to understand my environment? What do you think?
Georg Dauterman:
What I tell I tell a lot of people that is I'll gladly spend the hour with someone on the phone just talking through their IT environment before we d send them a formal assessment process just so I I I can understand what their goal is, what they want to get done, also what it kind of looks like so that they can they can ask questions. There's most time they may have a specific question in mind they want to ask versus this sort of this big hairy like I I don't understand this IT thing and now I gotta fix it. That's not what we're asking. No, sometimes start with the simple things like what's concerning you? What what what do you want to get done? and more important more recently, what's your IT strategy and AI strategy around IT? And then where's IT fit into your AI strategy and vice versa? So there's a lot there's a lot there. So I think I think it starts with this with a with a with a sort of like a no commitment assessment. or a conversation. And then if they and then from there, doing doing it a mini or like lack or not com full doesn't get you the result you're looking for. You really do want a full picture of it. So I think it's really important to to to put the value on building this more robust process that has more clarification. That was more it's more clear.
Megan Quick:
Right. Right. Yeah, and I I know I've seen you give people I've seen people take a sigh of relief after talking to you or just sort of like, Okay, I now I know what my next step needs to be, which is a good feeling.
Georg Dauterman:
Right. I mean a hundred percent. Okay it right. It sh it and once again, you know, I'll you know, for us we wanna work with people that really understand what we're doing and value it and vice versa. So it's better for us to if it's it's not if it's first half an hour, fifteen minute conversation and we know it's not gonna work out great for either one of us, then that's great. Everyone's sort of happy, I think. So it's useful.
Megan Quick:
Mm-hmm. And I I do think, and you might wanna keep this or not, George, but the I IT assessment I do think people underestimate how intimate this relationship is between your IT provider and your company. And we're gonna know a lot, we're gonna handle a lot, we we're kind of in this together and I do think the IT assessment is a foundational piece to make that successful. Yeah.
Georg Dauterman:
Correct. of all the people you work with outside your own company, we're gonna be one of the most commonly spoken with our team, you know at the very least the management is gonna be talking quarterly, which is probably more often than you do for most of your other partners' vendors. So we're we're really deep, you know, really deep into the environment and we should be and it should be treated with the appropriate level of Attention. I think that's the most important part of it.
Megan Quick:
I think that is a great place to stop. and again, my my I love IT assessments. They're just truly my no, I mean it's so funny. I
Georg Dauterman:
They're great. When they go well, it goes really well. Everyone feels good.
Megan Quick:
When they go yeah, and I as you know, I used to like be kind of the not the pro we have a wonderful project manager, but I was sort of I would partner with her. And so I feel I I'm just also passionate about these. And so if you're wondering if you should do this, I just think explore it. but George, thank you so much for again lending your expertise today on the creative stack. And y'all, we will see you next time. Thank you so much for joining us. Have a great day.
Georg Dauterman:
Thanks everyone. Bye now.