1 in 3 people ditch their New Years Resolution by the end of January. 73% of those that set New Years Resolutions give up before achieving their goal. Last month we wrote a few blogs that attempted to help small business owners form technology budget planning, moving away from reactive IT support and creating their 2016 IT strategy. But how close are you to actually achieving that goal? Whether your goal was to form a more comprehensive strategy, refresh your servers or workstations, move to the cloud or just get more productivity for your employees from your technology, we want to know – how’s that going for you? Are you the 1 of 3 people that ditches that resolution already? Here are a few signs that your business technology won’t change this year:
- You still haven’t met to form your IT budget.
While there are many months left in the year to create a technology budget, with it already being the end of January, you’re behind. Technology budgets should be planned the year prior, or minimally by the end of January so that they can be matched up with the strategic plan and you can begin implementing them. If you get started now there’s still a chance, but keep putting it off and your technology will continue to fall to the wayside and without any planned investments, you’re destined to have a huge capital expenditure if your technology fails.
- You’re dragging your feet on making a change.
If you’ve made the decision to switch away from reactive support or single-resource technology, it’s time to get the ball rolling. Reputable Managed Services providers are growing at a rapid pace and sometimes have as much as 6 weeks of onboarding new clients queued up. The sooner you get the ball rolling, the sooner the changes in your organization can happen. You don’t want to be in a situation where your server is about to fail and you can’t get onboarded for a new project for weeks.
- You haven’t done an audit of your existing technology.
In order to make changes, you have to have at least some understanding of where you’re at from a technology perspective. If you haven’t taken the time to assess the age and state of your workstations, your firewall and router and other network infrastructure or your server and internet connection – you have no idea what needs to change. That means you’re far behind the curve. You should have a full understanding of the age and state of your network and all equipment, your internet connection and services like antivirus and malware as well as operating system updates. Once this has been done, you can start planning your budget.
- You still aren’t exploring new line of business apps.
In order to continually innovate, you need to explore new business applications that come out for your industry. If you’ve recently completed an application upgrade that is working well for you, this may not apply, but for the vast majority of organizations on dated line of business applications – there are much better options available. If you struggled with productivity and efficiency in 2015, make 2016 the year that you switch business applications. An IT consultant with experience in your industry can give you some idea of what applications will work best for your workflow or assess options for you based on your budget and needs.
Your technology isn’t going to change itself. If you’ve been a little sluggish so far this year to make the much-needed changes to your technology and infrastructure, now is the time to get re-motivated to make those happen. It doesn’t have to be a huge overhaul, but making the decision to move from reactive support or complete a much-needed project is enough to get you in the right direction. Engage a technology consultant to help you determine where to start.
4 Reasons Large Organizations (100+ users) Should Consider Managed Services
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