Agincourt Technologies Ltd

Making ICT Decisions in Small Businesses

Working out what IT system works best can often be bewildering for resource-stretched small businesses – especially with the current economic uncertainty. The daily pressure of keeping the business afloat usually means that the technology infrastructure is often the very last thing they worry about.

What many small businesses don't realise is that technology can help their business run better and grow faster. Implementing the right IT hardware and software can bring major benefits including:

• improved customer experience
• significant cost and time-savings
• better asset utilisation

This ultimately frees up resources in the form of money, time and people so that the focus can then be on the core business.

To achieve these goals, small businesses should adopt the following in their approach to IT:Get IT faster

Get IT faster

It all begins with purchasing the most suitable solution for the business. Never automatically opt for buying the cheapest, or the most expensive, system. These days more and more vendors are tailoring solutions to the small business marketplace, meaning the best-fit solutions are available for all types of businesses, whatever their size.

Run IT better

In terms of running the IT operation, there are two aspects to making the investment pay. Firstly, standardise and streamline the IT infrastructure and secondly, be proactive in performing system management and support – therefore spending less time on day-to-day maintenance. Some small businesses may not have the resources to do this, but there are service and support solutions that can be customised to an organisation's individual needs, time demands and budgets.

Grow IT smarter

With changing times, companies need to foster an IT environment that supports rapidly changing business requirements -- whether that is in relation to data, devices, or the network. It's critical they adopt a flexible foundation on which new services can be quickly rolled out, or enhanced, to adapt to the evolving marketplace. If a company has aspirations of growth but its IT infrastructure has a ceiling in terms of the number of users supported on the system, or the levels of data that can be managed, then there will be trouble. Standardising the IT infrastructure from the beginning ensures that the organisation can implement future investments to manage company growth easily.

The goal for any small business should be to achieve the simplest IT environment possible. This way, more time can be spent focusing on growing the core business and not chasing issues that can hamper the company"s overall performance.