It goes without saying that businesses are currently suffering significant challenges due to the turbulent economic climate we all find ourselves in. From sky-high energy costs driving up production expenses and making it more costly to heat our premises, to the highest rate of inflation seen in around 40 years, organisations across all sectors are having to find new strategies to remain competitive and ensure financial resilience. More and more businesses are examining their use of technology in pursuit of these aims.
Exceptional IT is no longer the preserve of big corporations, with cost-effective, productivity boosting cloud solutions now available to organisations of all sizes. Consider freeing your business from the burden of yesteryear’s clunky, inflexible legacy systems, by embracing up-to-date and emerging technologies that will help your business remain resilient and competitive through the economic turmoil.
In this article we want to explain why now is the time to embrace digital transformation, with a run-down of the financial and strategic advantages offered by today’s class-leading tech solutions.
Solutions that scale in line with your business
It’s easy to remember the days when IT meant forking out significant sums of cash to acquire costly server hardware and networking equipment, usually to support some unyielding and unintuitive legacy system. Fortunately, those days are firmly in the past, with Cloud computing affording access to software, infrastructure and platforms via the user-friendly, subscription-based ‘as a service model.’ The beauty of this new system is that the supporting hardware is off site: housed, secured and maintained on your behalf by the cloud service provider. You pay for the level of provision that satisfies your business needs, with software access typically charged on a monthly per-user basis, and computing resources obtainable via malleable subscriptions, putting you in control of project costs and IT overheads. The cloud therefore allows for efficient IT spending, with costs expanding and contracting in line with the changing demands of your business.
Little or no infrastructure burden
The modern IT landscape is heaven for minimalists, with solutions often requiring far less on-premise hardware than their predecessors. Gone are bulky on-premise email servers thanks to cloud hosting, and banished are the inflexible fixed phone lines of days gone by, with hosted VoIP phone systems offering an infrastructure-lite alternative.
Today, modernising IT systems no longer requires painful, up-front capital outlay, and with minimal on-premise hardware you won’t be weighed down with the costly and time-consuming business of system maintenance. It’s also important to remember that hardware is almost always a depreciating asset, with its value plummeting from day one until obsolescence deems it near worthless.
Enhanced enterprise mobility
As recent years have proved, having the ability to operate your business remotely is vital to its resilience. Today’s solutions often offer enterprise mobility by default, giving you and your team the flexibility to work from home and remain productive and contactable on business trips.
But how can remote-capable tech save me money, I hear you ask. Remote work arrangements can carry subtle, indirect financial benefits. For example, allowing your team to work from home on a rotational basis could reduce the number of desks you require, which in turn could lower your office space requirements. In a best-case scenario this could allow for downsizing into a more affordable suite, or it could simply allow you to defer that inconvenient and costly office move that was on the horizon.
Working from home or remotely could also prove a hit with your team, allowing them to reduce or eliminate their commuting overheads and benefit from an enhanced work-life balance.
Prolific Automation
When you consider all the tasks and processes your business undertakes in a week, you can probably divide them into 2 categories: the fruitful and the unrewarding. Those that fall into the ‘unrewarding’ category include all those menial and repetitive business processes that present no real value to your customers, but are essential to the operational functioning of your business.
Automation is a common buzzword in the world of business technology, as automation tools (including AI-driven technologies) now permeate every domain of enterprise technology, from HR and accounting software to evergreen productivity suites like Microsoft 365. Automation allows you to eliminate or reduce the burden of those repetitive, menial tasks we mentioned, giving your team more time to focus of endeavours that improve your bottom line.
Secure technology that guards against financial harm
Under the GDPR, organisations are expected to ensure that commensurate ‘technical and organisational’ measures are instituted to protect personally identifiable data. Failure to implement such safeguards can carry disastrous financial consequences, with the average data breach typically costing UK SMEs £1200.
Applying data safeguards is therefore intrinsically linked to financial resilience. Thankfully, a vast array of cutting-edge solutions are available to safeguard data, including firewall protections, endpoint anti-virus software, encryption technologies and email filtering, as well as more advanced tools such as extended detection and response (XDR) services. By incorporating these security tools into your digital reinvention, you’ll help satisfy your compliance obligations and defend your business from the costly legal ramifications that a data breach could incur.
Your Success is Our Success
We’re a young, fun, and enthusiastic bunch of down-to-earth people that strive to relieve our clients’ IT headaches. We love to engage and create enjoyable relationships with our clients, but, ultimately, we’re here to help your business to run smoothly and securely. Our team has many years of experience in IT Consultancy, Website Development, Email/Web Hosting, Server Builds/ Installations/Maintenance, Network Issues and IT Security… and more! Contact us now to find out how we can help you.
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