As technology has advanced, the role IT can play in your business has significantly increased. Correctly utilizing technology solutions can enable you to rapidly grow your business.
All effective organizations know that achieving a positive Return On Investment (ROI) is good for business, but what about your Return On Technology?
While ROI is typically discussed within a marketing or accounting parameter, businesses should also take the time to calculate this important figure for any technology investments. Whether you are thinking about installing new applications or want to purchase new devices, calculating an ROT can help you to make a more informed decision, which can provide immediate and long-term benefits.
Technology is not simply a maintenance cost; you should see IT as an investment in improving your business operations.
If your current IT services aren’t helping you to optimize your business, you aren’t getting the best bang for your buck. Here at Summit Business Technologies, we take the time to learn your business inside and out so that we can craft IT solutions that will give you a return on your investment.
3 Steps To Better Leverage Your IT
- Work with a true IT partner
Strategic IT services involve the creation or optimization of IT solutions that solve your business’ pain points and help you improve operations so you can meet your business goals. This approach requires a strong partnership between your IT provider and your business, so that they can customize their approach to your needs.
Your IT team should be invested in finding technology solutions that are focused on removing pain points in your business operations and reducing or automating tasks your team needs to complete in order to deliver your product or service. If they aren’t it might be time to look into finding one that is.
- Recognize the difference between maintaining and investing in IT
The key difference between an IT team that is focused on maintaining your IT systems and one that is focused on investing in your IT is the emphasis on strategy.
IT without strategy is simply providing upkeep to an existing system, fixing issues as they arise, and not evaluating the effectiveness of your IT. Technically this approach works, but it is also often inefficient and not cost-effective.
For example, instead of simply fixing issues as they come up, a strategic IT partner would investigate why the problems were arising, find the root of the issue, and determine how to eliminate it. This removes the interruption to your business, the headache around fixing the issue, and the money you would have spent continuing to apply quick fixes.
- Measure your success
In order to know whether your IT solutions work for you, you need to be able to measure efficiency. Working with experienced IT experts can help you identify which measurements of success should be evaluated and how they can be followed appropriately. Key performance indicators such as capacity utilization, on-time delivery and earnings help you and your IT partner identify areas of your system that are underutilization or need to be adjusted.
Additionally, metrics can help you track the adoption of new IT solutions by your employees. After investing your time and money into an IT solution, you want it to be quickly adopted so you can begin to reap the benefits of it. If you are seeing a slow adoption you know you need to do more education or training on the new system or tweak it to better fit your employee’s needs.
