Technology is one of the biggest areas of waste in business. All business owners know that they need to invest in the latest technology if they want to improve productivity and stay relevant in a fast moving business world. The problem is, technology develops so quickly that a lot of people simply don’t know what they’re doing when it comes to choosing and implementing technology, and that leads to a lot of waste. You should have a certain portion of your budget set aside for technology costs but a lot of businesses find that it doesn’t go very far and they overspend. But you can avoid that if you do these simple things to make your technology budget go further.
Comprehensive Managed IT Services
The reason that a lot of businesses waste money on technology is that they’re dealing with too many third party companies. They go to one place for general maintenance and repairs, another for security, and they source all of their own marketing and sales software. You’ll find that it’s a lot cheaper if you outsource all of your IT needs to one comprehensive managed service like this one at clearfuze.com, and it will be a lot less time consuming for you as well. One service that handles your maintenance and helps to source and implement all of the software that you need will be cheaper and far more efficient than dealing with a lot of different companies. Your software will also be more effective because it will be better integrated.
Buy Software According To Your Needs
Buying software that you don’t need is a common tech pitfall for new businesses. When you’re looking for business software, it’s easy to be drawn in by good marketing and buy software on that promises all sorts of revolutionary features that will improve your business. The thing is, you don’t always need those extra features and you might not need the software at all in the first place. For example, if you’re a small business with 4 or 5 employees, you don’t need to spend huge amounts of money on accounting software that is designed to handle payroll and accounting for a huge corporation. You need to consider what your business needs are and then find software that fulfills them. Having managed IT services will help a lot here because they will be able to advise you on what you do and don’t need.
Improve Your Training
There’s no use spending money on software with lots of great features if your employees don’t know how to use any of those features. You will only see a good return on your investment if the new software that you implement improves productivity in your business, and that will only happen if people are trained properly. If you are unsure about how to effectively train employees on new technology, visit edgepointlearning.com for a good guide. Whenever you introduce any new technology to the business, it’s important that you dedicate a good amount of time to training and then roll it out slowly. If you implement it quickly and nobody is trained properly, it will only damage productivity until people get to grips with it.
These are all simple ways that you can stretch your technology budget and make sure that you see a good return on your investment.
