The IT Dilemma for Smaller Businesses

Occasionally, all businesses require assistance in some area of Information Technology (IT). For enterprise level businesses, their sources of assistance are to bring in more full-time employees with the expertise they need or to contract with an IT consulting group to get access to the level of knowledge, experience and understanding of the business that is needed.

However, small and smaller mid-size businesses may often not have the budget or level of need to justify adding full-time resources or have enough of a need to interest most large consulting companies.

The bottom line is that Small to small Mid-Size businesses often are left to rely on their 3rd party vendors whose vested interest is to sell more of their products and services and not necessarily do what's best for their customers business.

With businesses needing to provide 24x7 access to their goods and services through reliable internet capabilities, being able to support mobile users - internally and customer facing - combined with an increasing reliance on technology to provide cost-effective support for their core business functions, Information Technology support ranks near the top of business critical functions necessary to keep your business up and running effectively.

Now more than ever, your business' IT capabilities are a mission critical part of maintaining your core business operations. Your IT systems and services must be:

1) Reliable
2) Able to maintain a standard of performance
3) Capable of meeting current business needs
4) Capable of supporting new business requirements without significant delays
5) Able to adapt to meet the constant need for more
6) Able to drive costs down wherever possible.

Some of the more common concerns of not having the right type and level of IT Services are:

1) Inability of IT to meet the needs of the business in a timely and cost-effective manner
2) Recurring problems
3) Increasing impact of service downtime
4) Increasing occurrences of unplanned system outages
5) Low trust in IT throughout the organization
6) Users bypassing IT and bringing in unsupported devices and services that adversely affect other systems or provide redundant functionality
7) Continually increasing costs.

Just as you use legal services to ensure you are doing things correctly from a liability and protection standpoint or rely on a CPA / CFO to ensure you are managing your financials correctly, you should also have access to the same level of knowledge and experience for IT services.

As the marketplace evolves, it is becoming increasingly necessary to have access to the specific IT knowledge and experience that can be provided by a trusted partner. In searching for this partner, I recommend seeking the following criteria: One that is vendor/product agnostic, one that focuses on your business' best interests, the ability to provide assistance when needed and only for as long as needed, and the ability to provide assistance in a highly cost-effective manner.

Gary Ayres is a senior IT and IT Outsourcing veteran and Advisor to Small-Mid Tier and Fortune 1000 businesses assisting them in optimizing their IT organizations, controlling IT spend and improving services. Inquiries and comments are welcome at contact@basicitadvisors.com.

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