Did you know that industry data suggests that the average small business loses over $10,000 per year simply by making “common-sense” IT decisions that lack a long-term strategy? In fact, most IT decision-makers look at technology as little more than a utility, like water or electricity, rather than a competitive advantage. IT is not a cost to be minimized; it’s a way to get ahead (and stay ahead), and it’s time to fix the mistakes you’ve made in the past.
Today, we’re covering the 5 biggest IT mistakes that are holding back your bottom line.
Avoid the Big Box Hardware Trap
While it might look like a great deal on the surface, purchasing your technology from your local retail store is sure to disappoint you in the long term. This technology is typically consumer-grade hardware that lacks the internal components required for a professional environment. With shorter lifespans due to less-than-ideal tech, you can expect more downtime and a replacement in the foreseeable future, which offsets the “great deal” you got in the first place.
The Rise of Shadow IT
Having the wrong approach to IT policy can also cost your business, especially if you don’t have standard approved tools that your team can rely on. Without standardization, they’ll be forced to find their own tools, an approach known as Shadow IT, and that makes your infrastructure much more difficult to secure and manage over the long haul. When you turn IT into an enabler rather than a barrier, your business can finally thrive.
Relying on a Server In a Closet
Most businesses want a secure place to store their data, so they turn to a local physical server. However, if your business doesn’t have any off-site redundancies in place, it effectively has a single point of failure, meaning all it takes is one major disaster to wipe your business out for good. You cannot rely on one copy of your data; you need multiples, including off-site storage and immutable copies that cannot be changed or altered at all.
Operating Without an Onboarding and Offboarding Plan
Your staff will change over time, but you need consistent and reliable onboarding and offboarding to ensure your technology infrastructure remains stable and predictable. You don’t want your former employees leaving with important data or devices, and you want to get new hires up to speed as quickly as possible. What you need is, again, standardization, in this case processes that ensure employees quickly get all the permissions they need during onboarding, and those same permissions are just as quickly revoked upon offboarding.
Treating IT as a Utility, Not a Partner
IT exists for way more than just to solve your technology problems. When you treat IT like a strategic partner in pushing your business forward, you can align tech spending with your goals. We recommend you conduct a regular business review to start measuring success with your IT in different ways (like, for example, reduced downtime, increased profits, and so on).
For more information about IT-related matters, give our technology experts at Voyage Technology a call at 800.618.9844.
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