Your business is growing, and you have all the plans in place to increase sales, to deliver differentiated services and maybe even to expand into new markets or new geographies. At some point, you will hit some ‘bumps in the road’ and will have to make some operational changes to overcome these. It is highly likely that these bumps will involve IT in some way. Rather than inhibiting your progress, these stages in your business’ journey can be the perfect trigger to get you to think differently and improve your operations as a result.
Your IT Team is at breaking point
At some stage, your in-house IT team will reach breaking point. This will become obvious, as issues and outages will become more frequent and you will start having a steady stream of people telling you that IT is not working. Just recruiting another head is seldom the answer, as the root cause is more likely to be a skills gap rather than a lack of manpower.
This means it is time to think differently – is there another way to scale IT? Augmenting your existing resources with an outsourced IT services partner should be explored; this could inject the skills and flexibility you require.
You need to move or open a new office
Whether you need to move to a bigger office or plan on opening an additional one in a new location, you’ll need to make some changes to your current IT Infrastructure. Rather than just stretch and expand what you have, this is the perfect time to take a step back and consider a step change.
Taking a critical look at your current technology and how it is supporting the business is always beneficial. An office move is a perfect trigger for reflection as it necessitates some technology expenditure.
You’re faced with a big IT investment decision
You are being told you need to purchase a new server, more storage or new application software. This is the time to ensure that you have a strategy for your IT in place, and that this strategy is fully aligned to the needs, aspirations and objectives of the business.
Your IT should never be left to just evolve; it needs a strategy and a roadmap. Technology is developing at such a pace that it is always worth taking a pause and gaining external help to review your IT plans.
Your business can no longer afford any downtime
As businesses grow, there becomes a point where their dependency on systems and their IT infrastructure becomes critical. Any prolonged period of downtime will have a significant impact on the business, whether that be an inability to take and fulfil orders or provide services to customers.
It is at this point that organisations need to fully assess the risks of IT failures and explore the options available to them to build business continuity into their IT services.
Technology plays a pivotal role in almost every business and taking the right steps at the right time cannot only assist business growth, but accelerate it.
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