IT Impacts Your Bottom Line
You might be surprised to learn that your approach to distributing your IT budget can affect your business in many ways.
Ideally, your IT strategy is custom-crafted for your company’s particular needs; one that not only proactively minimizes downtime and provides protection against security breakdowns and cyber threats, but that also streamlines employee costs and creates convenient, secure customer experiences. If your IT doesn’t look like this, you’re losing money.
Unsure if your IT plan is profitable? If you’re doing any of the following, it probably isn’t.
The top 3 ways that businesses like yours are blowing their IT budget:
IT Service Is Too Small
Your firm’s technology shouldn’t be entrusted to your brother-in-law just because he’s “good with computers.” IT isn’t a side hustle. What happens when he’s at his full-time job and you develop a network issue? Your business comes to a halt, and you may be forced to spend additional monies, hiring temporary IT staff who are unfamiliar with your business and network to quickly address the problems before your customers and bottom line feel the effects.
As your business expands, if your IT team isn’t evolving alongside it, the gains you’ve made will dwindle as you become forced to spend more revenue thwarting security issues, boosting deteriorating or obsolete systems, and handling business interruptions.
Consider that there are Managed Service Providers in your area that understand and work with micro and small businesses with thin IT budgets.
IT Service is Too Large
Conversely, maintaining a large IT team can be costly too. As businesses grow, so does employee count, and the hardware and software they depend on. Without technical guidance or expertise, owners and managers simply hire additional IT staff to support the growing business.
While this seems like the most logical thing to do, it can actually be a costly disaster to your growing business. An outsourced IT consultant and service provider like Gulf South Technology Solutions can help determine if there is a true need for additional staff, or if there are tasks and processes that can be automated or streamlined instead, making the existing staff more efficient.
If it is determined that additional staff is needed, it may make more sense to continue to engage the outsourced provider versus hiring internally. Managed Service Providers typically bring a team of technical expertise, scalability for growth and one-off projects, knowledge of best practices and the latest technology to keep your business running efficiently in more than just your IT department.
Utilizing the right IT partner can help reduce payroll and downtime, maximizing profitability.
Upgrading Too Little
Many businesses continue to prop up outdated systems in an attempt to delay spending money to upgrade equipment. Ultimately, businesses that upgrade infrequently are stuck with computers that break down and require extensive repairs, servers that fail and cause fruitless business downtime, or security risks that can be destructive to your business’s — not to mention your customers’ — data.
If you’ve noticed your technology requiring more and more service, you are already leaking revenue on operating costs; it’s time to consider investing in upgrades.
How to maximize profitability with your IT budget:
Managed IT
Contracting an external service may help you avoid pouring more revenue down the drain. Full-time, on-site employees require benefits packages complete with vacation and sick time off, as well as training and travel costs; contractors have fixed, predictable rates, and they’re always there when you need them.
Contracting an IT service allows you to hire an expert team of professionals for a duration of service that works within your budget. And, managed IT service is loaded with a full team’s worth of knowledge and experience — minus the administrative overhead and management headaches that come with managing full-time employees.
Need an IT service that works with your business and budget? Gulf South Technology Solutions has the ability to keep pace with your business as it grows, implementing each new technological tool your business needs to stay competitive. Let’s schedule a time to chat so we can help put your company on the path to greater success.