As technology has advanced, the role IT can play in your business has significantly increased. Correctly utilising technology solutions can enable you to rapidly grow your business.
All effective organisations know that achieving a positive Return On Investment (ROI) is good for business, but what about 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. It is an asset used to maximise the leverage out of one of your most expensive costs- Labour.
If your current IT services aren’t helping you to optimise your business, you aren’t getting the best bang for your buck. Here at Sensible, 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.
Strategic IT services involve the creation or optimisation 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 customise their approach to your needs.
Managed IT Services is commonly a reactive service - you are responding to events as they occur and resolving the technical issue that occurred. Strategic IT services look at your business model and fit your IT systems accordingly. Your IT team should be looking at why events occur and plan your IT to minimise reactive events- making your operations as seamless and efficient as possible for your clients and your staff. If they aren’t it might be time to look into finding one that is.
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.
In order to know whether your IT solutions work for you, you need to be able to measure efficiency. All costs should be measured to see if you are extracting the right value for your organisation. IT has the most potential to ADD value to your bottom line if implemented properly. 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 utilisation, on-time delivery and earnings help you and your IT partner identify areas of your system that are underutilisation 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.
