Tech is meant to make our lives easier by doing things like giving us a more competitive edge, helping us with keeping our small business organized, and increasing our productivity. Whether it’s meant to improve profitability, productivity, communication, or customer service, using tech efficiently as a small business can go quite away in terms of being successful.
However, with so much tech and the lightning speed with which it changes, how do you choose the right ones? Let’s take a peek.
Know Your Needs
Before going out to buy that latest master data management tech or service, conduct a tech inventory within your business. What services and tech are already in place and how well do they serve the business?
Place all current tech into three basic categories – needs improvement, bad, and good. This will allow you to assess where any holes might be when it comes to your tech infrastructure.
Tech that Grows with the Business
Buying new tech can be a bit pricey, so it’s critical to give careful thought to what you need. You always need the right tools for the job. For example, if you’re a photographer, you wouldn’t go out and buy any old camera lens, you’d get the one you need to make your shots look as good as they possibly can. Same thing with business tech.
One way to assess a potential purchase and see how it can give your small business a boost is to check around industry-specific forums. What are the businesses similar to yours using? Have they had any issues with it? Have they found anything that became outdated overly quickly and what solutions did they come up with?
Also, look for options that will help you save on your tech purchase. For example, if you need a new computer, perhaps you can get a refurbished laptop or desktop with better specs than your current one. Also, inquire about special pricing for businesses, especially if you’re buying several units.
Backup Plan
Tech fails from time to time – even augmented intelligence. This is simply a fact that we have to deal with. If you fail to plan for it, you might be faced with having to shut your business down for at least a little while. This can lead to considerable losses. For those completely dependent on tech, it’s critical to complete a BIA, or Business Impact Analysis, in order to attempt to predict the consequences of your business processes being interrupted.
This can assist you with gathering the intel you need in order to come up with a strategy for recovery in the event the unthinkable happens.
Support
Often, the person you need to deal with such tech services as security, troubleshooting, upgrades, and installation will be a professional. So think about hiring or outsourcing specific personnel for your Canberra IT support. Once you’ve got this service or individual on staff, make sure that you have a protocol for your other staff to report their IT issues and that each and every single one of them is familiar with that protocol.
Training
Finally, we all know how easy it can be to spend thousands and thousands of dollars on tech that’s state of the art, but if you have a staff who doesn’t know how to use it in an effective manner, your business still won’t be operating at its optimum efficiency.
For this reason, you should develop an ongoing process of training so that each of your employees will be able to benefit from the investments you’ve made in IT and so that they’ll have the ability to remain up to date with any improvements you continue making.
This is essential when it comes to making the most out of each and every single tech investment you make. If you believe that your company is worth making these massive tech investments, aren’t your people also worth it?
