In July each year, when you are reviewing your business budget for the year ahead, it is a great time to review your technology and factor the cost increase or savings into your business budget.

Look back on the last year and think about your technology pain points. Now look forward to what new services you want to provide to your customers and understand the technology required. This guide will help you perform this review and determine how technology can help you grow and improve your business. Technology is advancing so quickly and there are more cyber threats that can destroy your business.

Ageing hardware

Computer with hard drives on average last about four years before they start to run slow. Replacing the hard drive on a slow computer with a new Solid State Drive can dramatically improve the speed of the computer. Your staff productivity will also increase because they can work faster and don’t have to wait for the computer to process tasks. If the computer is about eight years old then it would be better to replace it with a computer with a faster processor.

With the introduction of virtulisation technology many years ago, you may be able to run mutiple computers on the one physical computer. This saves space and electricity.

Review the computers your business owns and determine if they need replacing and budget accordingly.

The questions you should be asking are:

• Is the computer running slow? If so, do I need to replace or retire the computer if it is not used anymore?
• Are there benefits in virtulising the computer or application?
• Can I use a cloud solution instead?

Networking

Today’s business is more connected to the Internet than every before and many businesses rely on cloud solutions to support their business. This could be accounting software, Job Management software, Email solutions, etc. If your Internet was down for only one day and your staff could not access these online services, what would be the cost of this downtime. You may want to consider installing a 4G/5G backup Internet device for when the NBN is unavailable.

The questions you should be asking are:

• Does the Wi-Fi reach all parts of the office or home?
• Is the Internet fast enough?
• Do I need 4G/5G Internet backup?

Remote Access

The Coronivirus pandemic of 2021/22 has forced businesses to leverage more cloud solutions and their staff worked remotely from their homes. Have you done enough to enable staff to work efficiently from home?

Have a think about:

• Can staff access all business information remotely?
• Do I need an office?
• Do my current solutions fully support working from home?
• Can your staff make business phone calls using the business PBX from anywhere?
• Consider moving your files to cloud storage such as Microsoft SharePoint.

Backups

All businesses need insurance just in case the office building burns down, you provide bad advice or your staff get injured at work. Similar insurance is required for computer systems as they can also have bad days. When a computer is not working, your business could grind to a halt. A server could take days or weeks to recover from a hardware issue. A backup solution can reduce your downtime to a matter of minutes.

Think about:

• What are my critical computer systems?
• What is the daily cost of downtime of each system?
• Can I afford this downtime cost?
• Would my business reputation suffer?
• Would customers go to my competitors?
• Do I need a backup solution to minimise the impact of downtime?
• What is my Business Continuity Plan?

Security

Cyber Security is an increasing threat to all businesses. It is easier and more lucrative for a criminal to encrypt your files and demand a randsom to decrypt the files than rob a bank. All businesses should have an EndPoint Security product on all computers, Email filtering solution to scan emails for unwanted threats, automated patch management to ensure the security of all devices and a backup solution to enable easy recovery in the event of a security breach. These are the bare basic security you should have in place. If you do not have one or more of these solutions in place, you need to seriously consider implementing them.

Application Consolidation

We see many businesses who are using Micosoft 365 and then pay for Google Workspace for emails and Google Drive or Dropbox for cloud file storage and then pay for Zoom for video conferencing. Their Microsoft 365 subscription includes all this, a mailbox, cloud file storage and video conferencing features. By reviewing all the applications you are using, you could save some serious cash and simplify your business processes.

Need Help?

If you do not know where to start with reviewing your technology then we can help. We provide a free service to review your current technology and will provide a written report with recommendations to put in place to protect your business and keep it running 100% of the time.