I meet with a lot of companies on a daily basis. Some of them are ready to make a change in their technology and some aren’t so sure. Some of them have been dealing with unreliable IT support and providers that are charging them thousands in time and materials just to fix broken technology. They’re trying to stay loyal, but their entire organization is bleeding from a productivity and efficiency perspective. I very rarely get this cut and dry in person with prospects, but if I could sit a few of them down and just be 100% candid with them, I would say: Just do it. Sounds a little cliche, but there’s so much back and forth that happens in making a decision in a medium-sized business. Here are a few reasons why I think you just need to take the Nike approach to your IT strategy.
- Your productivity depends on it.
Seriously, though. Consider all of the time you spend right now worrying about backups or compliance, security issues, troubleshooting printers and software applications, dealing with network slowness. That’s a lot of time. TONS of time, actually. We recently did a calculation break down for a company whose Managed Services and IT support we took over and determined that they were losing $20,000.00 per month in productivity dollars. Faulty networks and technology has a massive impact on productivity and the bottom line for many organizations. Take time to do a few calculations to determine what you’re really losing when you’re down and you might realize that you should make a change.
- Your employees aren’t going to stick around much longer.
Did you know that outdated technology has a huge impact on employee happiness? Network slowness, poor response and resolution times from your Help Desk, and a failure to adopt modern applications and tools that will help them be more productive are just some of the reasons that employees hate your outdated technology. With the right tools, you can seriously boost efficiency in your younger workforce. With the costs to find and train good people, you don’t want to add to that expense finding new ones. The Millennial generation is obsessed with efficient technology and if you don’t take the steps to improve your IT strategy now, you’re going to start losing employees to competitors that have a better handle on their technology, which is just going to cost you.
- It’s impacting your ability to deliver stellar customer service.
Everyone is talking about it – the buzzword for 2016 is “customer experience”. Every business is making an effort to sharpen how they deliver from a customer service perspective. The same Millennials that are coming into the workforce are becoming your customers. Whether you’re in retail, professional services, manufacturing, finance or any other industry – you have to figure out how you’re going to up your game this year and make the experience for your customer better than ever. That starts with technology. A new application, a better line of business software, faster speeds for internet access, a more reliable network and server and quality phone systems.
Overwhelmingly what is happening in the business world is that the organizations that embrace technology innovation are rising to the top, because they can execute for their customers in an efficient, reliable way. Employees are selecting organizations that are on the cutting edge and adopting new tools and applications that help them do their jobs better. Executives that can’t make organizations profitable are being replaced by those that can. I’m not saying that you’re going to go out of business. But there’s a gradual shift that’s happening now and late adopters will suffer. You can do something now. You can take action to better the technology that your employees and customers interact with on a daily basis – or you can continue to bandaid it. You can ignore it. I say you go the other way, though. Just do it. Nike your technology. You won’t regret it.