Businesses are continuing to look for new ways to reduce expenses, cut operating costs and maximize existing budgets. While some departments or areas of your business can afford to have budgets cut, key areas of your business like marketing investments must never be reduced. Besides marketing, information technology is another key area that must never see the company axe.
We all understand the importance of never cutting your marketing budget, after all business owners always want to increase revenues and smart marketing provides this. However, many fail to see the importance of having up-to-date technology systems as a key mechanism to increase operational output, improve employee morale and increase productivity and efficiencies even with fewer employees.
Company IT systems must continue to receive investment. Technologies such as cloud computing and cloud services provide an ability to have the latest IT systems and replace aging systems while decreasing costs related to hardware, software and maintenance. Cloud pricing models allow today’s business owners to get more bang for their IT investment buck without a significant CapEx investment. Many cloud services actually fit into an OpEx category on your balance sheet.
The latest in modern technology such as tablets (iPad and Windows Surface) are also great tools to invest in. In some situations, a tablet computer in the right hands could lead to significant revenue gains. Now a sales professional can close the deal, get the order and do up all the paperwork while with the client, saving the expense and time to come back to the office, print out any contracts and send them out via courier. Sales velocity increases dramatically when business invests in the right technology.
Old computer systems that you had back in 2008 may have been state-of-the-art back then, but today, these computer systems are dinosaurs. You may think you are saving more by holding onto to these old computers and laptops, however it is quite the opposite. Today’s computers are tuned to use less energy, run faster and increase efficiencies of the user. Plus they require less care and maintenance, once again saving your business money.
With all these cost savings in place, why do we say never slash your IT budget? The money that you were spending to keep your old legacy computers running or have an IT company take care of, can now be reinvested into other areas of your business where IT can assist in streamlining workflows and operational efficiencies. Maybe it is an investment in a Microsoft SharePoint solution or the latest smartphone technology. Perhaps your company website needs a major overhaul. Once you start looking at IT strategically, you can see other areas of the business needing attention that could net you a new contract or save money in other sections of the business.
Our IT Professionals help business across the region look at technology strategically, as a tool to increase customer satisfaction, loyalty and streamline operations. If your existing IT guy is just fixing your computers and putting band-aid solutions in place, we need to talk.
