Sep 09
11
The general saying these days is that the economy is in a bad shape, things are tight and it is becoming increasingly difficult to make payroll. For small business owners, this is evident in the rate at which employees are being laid off, or having their hours reduced. The danger in all this is that cost cutting may be taken to such an extreme level that it is bound to affect productivity in the long run. I remember working very hard to convince a friend of mine to be careful about laying off too many good employees. “Why?” he asked, and my response was, what are you going to do if the work starts coming in and you do not have experienced people to get it out the door efficiently and profitably?
Too drastic of a cut may affect the bottom line as it may cripple the ability of the affected organization to compete effectively. Without good employees to make systems work quickly and effectively, it can take longer to make informed business decisions.
This scenario is even more dire in the technology field. With the tough economic times, it is imperative that technology is deployed in ways that will allow users to do more in less time. More and more data is at our disposal these days, but in many small business environments, there is a serious crisis in terms of outdated hardware and software. A recent assessment of a client’s network infrastructure showed that of the thirty plus computers in the shop, only one was ready for Windows 7. In this kind of environment, it will be no surprise if the employees are frequently frustrated because they have to work with slow computers which ultimately impacts their productivity.
It is a fact that outdated equipment can affect productivity especially if the business owner is unable to upgrade hardware and software to accommodate the disk and memory requirements of today’s applications. With aging computers comes the attendant frequent calls to the support team and this disrupts work-flow as the repairs needed may be time consuming.
A reliable technology infrastructure is essential to running a profitable and efficient business. So, in these tough times, small business owners should resist the temptation to make too deep of a cut in their IT budgets. On the other hand, this is also a very good time to consider managed services. A service provider may be able to work out a leasing agreement with a partner and replace aging equipment with brand new ones without too much overhead to the business owner. The service provider can act as the IT Department and provide round the clock monitoring so that the business owner can focus on growing the business and making it profitable. The provider can make sure that systems are running at the most optimal level.
If you are having a hard time working with your current technology infrastructure, we may be able to help you at Tech Prognosis. Contact us here.
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