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more data is at our disposal these days, but in many small business environments, there is a serious crisis in terms of outdated hardware and software.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It is a fact that outdated equipment can affect productivity especially if the business owner is unable to upgrade hardware and software to accommodate the disk and memory requirements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.

One thing that is not common in small business environments is process automation. Most processes are manually carried out. What we have to realize is that as hard as we try, at some point, somebody forgets to run a system scan or the backup program. Occasionally, someone could accidentally turn off or stop a backup application before the process is completed.
In many small business environments, only one employee is in charge of I.T. support, system maintenance and running backups. If that employee goes on vacation or stays home sick one day, the backups will not run.
It is very difficult for a small business owner to rely solely on human effort to keep computer systems of the business safe.
The best practice is to strive for automation in order to have consistent, reliable updates to your security software and backup systems. There is also the need for processes to run independent of any particular individual.
If you re a business owner, or you are in charge of running updates and performing regular maintenance, automation free up untold amounts of time and spare endless headaches. Automatic updates, backups and system scans, deployed system-wide, ensure that your whole business stays safe and up-to-date no matter who is in the office and who remembers to do what