Companies hate spending big on technology upgrades, especially considering they take place every 24-36 months. But, unfortunately outdated technology is the negative force behind many older companies today, and with outdated tech, your product is already inferior to your competitor’s. Not to mention that outdated technology can cause series issues for you, your employees and your customers the longer you wait to update.
Outdated technology can be the cause of decline in productivity from your employees which in turn leads to severe problems for your business. Unproductive employees mean a loss in money, sales and information sharing, giving way to increased bottom line. Often, companies will fail as a result of this, but yours doesn’t have to be one of those companies if you do one thing and one thing only: outsource IT to a specialist.
Why Outsource IT?
When you outsource your IT, you are able to improve your company focus, instead of trying to be your own IT company as well. Amongst the main reasons for choosing to outsource IT is that there is now one place where each employees piece of equipment is tracked for security, corruption and decreased functionality to name a few. When technology is left unattended, unfortunately it doesn’t age gracefully – severe data loss and corruption, limited flexibility and poor professional engagement are real issues your company faces, before your customer is even at the door.
With technology advancing every day, it may only be one small feature that raises your service or product above your competitors, but you might not even know it exists or have the time to control internal updates. Through streamlined and automated systems offered when your outsource IT, your company is able to stay on top of technological advances in your industry, which can mean the difference between happy, engaged consumers of your product/service and consumers who are looking around for a better service/product.
What your Outdated Tech is Costing You
If you’re still unsure about whether or not you should outsource IT to specialists, consider how much time is spent fixing old IT, updating programs, researching technology to replace failing systems, malware issues and so on. As Technology infrastructure evolves and ages it becomes more expensive to fix, the money being spent on fixing broken systems and hardware is money that is being taken away from growing your business.
Productivity decreases as employees work to resolve IT problems. If systems are down work can’t be finished, wait times increase and the employee complacency rises while deadlines deteriorate as hardware and software begin to fail more and more. If your employees are waiting 5 minutes for files to open or 10 minutes for computers to boot up, outdated systems can waste up to 1 week per year in productivity, PER employee!
When talking in dollars and cents, for the average $50,000 per annum employee, you’re paying over $700 for them to sit there, waiting. Not including the time wasted attempting to fix the issues themselves, bringing in other employees for assistance. Your outdated tech is costing you, in many ways.
To make matters worse, outdated software is often riddled with security holes, leaving your company’s sensitive data open to cyber-attacks and cyber terrorism. Data security is an increasingly sensitive topic, not even major companies like Apple are safe. If your business is not safe, you can be sure your customers will go elsewhere to protect their unique information.
If that wasn’t enough to worry about, did you know that auditors can actually fine companies that do not transition from unsupported software? Outdated hardware and software can run the risk of legal and regulatory compliance problem down the track.
The Next Steps
As a more informed professional, you now know what’s at risk. It’s well worth considering a move to cloud services and a Managed Service provider to manage these upgrades for you. Doing so will allow you and your employees to focus on what is really important – servicing your customers to the best of your ability and business growth. For an all-inclusive overlook of outsourcing your IT, take a look at the comprehensive guide “8 Mistakes Businesses Make When Outsourcing IT”.
