We still see this too much in the real world – small businesses that think of their technology not as productivity tools that can speed up business processes saving them time and money, but as necessary evils that they want to spend as little money as possible on.
Here is what else we see as a result:
• Unrefined business processes that cost time rather than save it, because time wasn’t spent on learning an application properly.
• Poor technology platform choices because the only person consulted was a 16 year old nephew that knows what technology is cool, but not necessarily what technology works for business or how to implement it.
• Poor technology performance, due to cutting corners on vital, required items such as PC hardware specs and maintenance, Operating system maintenance, security and anti-virus or internet access services, and centralizing critical data on a server or network storage device.
• Time and money lost due to inadequate printing devices and no management.
• Improper file storage and no backup or recovery solution.
One of the main things that wastes time and money is either ignoring problems until they snowball into issues, or setting untrained, inexperienced employees to the task of managing the business’s IT and with no budget to do so. Not only do they not have the training required to adequately manage and make good IT decisions, but the task of problem solving takes them away from their primary roles – the role they were hired for – which can have a negative impact on productivity throughout the organization and less visibly end up costing the company a whole lot more than a qualified IT consultant or contractor would.
Storing critical data on your Best Buy bargain laptop? Yeah... that's why they're not called Best Plan.
Lest we ignore the biggest disaster waiting to happen; leaving back-ups in the hands of the employees themselves. If your job was painting houses, would you use ladders or stand on the shoulders of your employees? And when there is a failure, what is the plan to recover from it? A single hard drive failure could potentially put a business out of business.
What is the simple solution? Treat your IT as it deserves to be treated and put it in the hands of professionals. The technology industry moves fast – let a company that keeps up with those changes advise you in what changes would work best to improve your business.
Not everything is a do-it-yourself project. Some of life’s necessities need to be handled by a professional, or the results could end in disaster.
Is your business headed for an IT disaster?
