You might like to think your team keeps to your officially assigned technology, but is this actually the case for your business? The real world is often messier and less clear-cut, and you might have a team that has downloaded unapproved tools to their devices in an effort to make their workdays easier. You have a responsibility to manage this chaos—also known as shadow IT—before it becomes your company’s downfall.
As IT administrators, we spend our days securing networks and managing cloud migrations, yet one of the biggest budget leaks often sits right in the corner of the office: the printer. If you have not taken a serious look at your organization’s printing costs lately, the numbers are staggering. The average organization spends between 1% and 3% of their annual revenue on printing. That comes out to roughly $750 per employee every year. With a strategic digital transformation, however, these costs stop skyrocketing; they start vanishing.
Open your Profit & Loss statement. I’m willing to bet that the IT line is sitting squarely in the expense column, right next to rent, electricity, and paper towels. For many business owners, IT is seen as a necessary evil; a cost center, a black hole they just have to throw money into. When you see a technology bill, you get that double-take and cringe. Your primary goal is to minimize this cost; often to the point of avoidance.
For anyone who has seen the movie Moneyball, remember Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s? In the early 2000s, Beane revolutionized baseball with “Moneyball,” a radical approach to team building. Faced with a shoestring budget, he eschewed traditional scouting metrics and instead used sabermetrics—advanced statistical analysis—to identify undervalued players. The result? A small-market team consistently outperforming richer rivals, proving that data, not just dollars, could buy success. Fast forward to today, and the principles of Moneyball are more relevant than ever for modern businesses. In an increasingly competitive landscape, every company, regardless of size or industry, can leverage data to make smarter decisions, optimize resources, and ultimately, build a better business for less.
Let’s face it, your business probably can’t remember the last time it used that old fax machine sitting in the corner. It’s taking up precious time, money, and resources that could be reinvested into other parts of your business. Don’t believe us? Here are three reasons why you should ditch the fax machine.
Business technology can often put business owners in a tough spot. There are dozens of options out there in terms of hardware and software alike, each promising earth-shattering changes… many with an equally earth-shattering price tag. This presents a significant dilemma for business owners. While the goal is to innovate and empower their teams, it can seem like many of these tools are simply not worth the investment, but at the same time, denying access feels like denying innovation. The solution to this dilemma, however, is fortunately simple: leaning on data to inform your decisions and enable yourself to say the dreaded two-letter word: “no.”
Some surprises can be lots of fun. That said, any surprise impacts to your business’ IT won’t be. Whether a server crashes, your wireless connectivity goes kaput, or you’re suddenly dealing with a security threat, the outcome is likely the same: the problem is fixed, but the invoice delivered to you a week or so later introduces a brand-new issue… the bill. Nowadays, there is no reason for this little scenario to happen. Instead, your IT can be treated as a predictable utility cost without any dramatic surprises to throw off your plans.
How many duties and responsibilities fall on you as a business owner? More often than not, you’ll find yourself wearing multiple hats, picking up the slack where you can because you just don’t have the time or the resources to hire staff for certain specialized tasks. Unfortunately, IT maintenance and management is one such role that falls to the wayside all too often—but it doesn’t have to.
Cloud computing has altered how businesses operate forever and it’s because it brings unprecedented levels of flexibility and efficiency. One of its most compelling features is its scalability, the ability to easily handle a growing amount of work by adding or removing resources as needed.
Water cooling is a common method of keeping computing hardware at reasonable temperatures, particularly for gaming PCs, data centers, and similar high-demand applications. What if, however, a business used a similar method to keep their entire building climate-controlled? Microsoft intends to do so in some new data centers, as many residences have begun implementing a version of this system.