Published: November 23rd, 2015
There is no longer any way to separate the day-to-day running of a business from technology. No enterprise can be solely run on paper anymore, whether it’s keeping records or communicating with customers, you need to be connected.
Good technology should get out of your way, boosting efficiency and perhaps making the less interesting chores of administration a bit more bearable (or even totally automated!).
Businesses which have grabbed the opportunities of IT with both hands can easily take it for granted that all firms have done the same, but our experience at Bespoke Computing is that there is still a sizeable technology gap for many organisations.
This can happen because they’ve managed to get by with the same-old, same-old so there’s no imperative to change until a hurdle appears that only IT can get you over. Sometimes a business has moved piecemeal with the tech, adding services and devices here and there, but perhaps not in a planned and coherent way. Or it can just happen that as a result of their own success the IT needs to be put in place in order to ensure that the growth can be sustained.
The first trick is to recognise if you’re in one of these situations – and the next is to find a way to manage your technological evolution in a controlled way.
By controlled I mean affordable, appropriate to your genuine needs and capable of being adopted by your staff (and maybe your customers or clients) without scaring them away! Ideally, whatever you put in place should also be aimed at saving your time, money or both.
The Marches Growth Hub is all about sharing information and advice. That’s where everything has to start. It doesn’t matter if you’re brilliant in your profession but don’t know the first thing about IT – find someone who does, ask the questions, weigh up the answers and then plan a way forward.
Whatever you do, don’t get left behind by the technology.
CHRIS PALLETT has 20 years experience in the IT sector and is the managing director of Bespoke Computing Ltd, which is based in Telford but which serves clients throughout the Marches and beyond.
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