All entrepreneurs know that constant struggle. The fine line that must be walked every day of every month of every year. The constant balancing act of keeping overhead costs manageable while still investing sufficiently enough in their business for it to perform well, maintain a stable cash flow and facilitate sustainable growth. Not all businesses are able to do this and as important as it is to keep a steady stream of seed money coming into the business to prevent its growth from stagnating, it’s also important to combat wasteful spending. The world of tech and IT is a particularly fraught subject for entrepreneurs. After all, every business knows that investing in tech is one of the best ways to stay agile and ensure that they’re able to meet tomorrow’s challenges even as they rise to today’s. But not all spending on IT infrastructure, software and technology is good spending. Indeed, it’s a fairly common area of wasteful spending.
If you’re serious about giving your business a competitive technical edge, yet want to eliminate any spending that doesn’t generate a worthy ROI it’s important that you eliminate these wasteful spending practices when it comes to your IT infrastructure…
Grafting the new onto the old
Lots of CEOs want to have the latest shiny thing so that they can assure their shareholders that their business is on the technological cutting edge. Unfortunately, your business may not be equipped to get the best out of the shiny new thing because it’s being grafted onto a rusty old infrastructure. Many businesses still use mainframe computers not because they’re lazy or cheap but because there’s so much on them that’s mission critical. If you’re to be truly agile, sometimes you need to tear down before you can build.
You’re still using a traditional phone company to make calls
Communications are an essential part of any business, but in the digital age we have more ways in which to communicate to each other and to our customers. Unfortunately, if you’re still using a traditional phone line to make outgoing calls you may well end up spending a fortune unnecessarily. The future of making phone calls is VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol). Big businesses have been using it for some time now, but recently small companies have gotten in on the act so it’s worth contacting www.xbase.com to see how VOIP could benefit you. At the very least you’ll save money on calls while benefiting from a range of productivity boosting features for your employees.
You’re resistant to outsourcing
Many entrepreneurs are reluctant to outsource any aspect of their operation, including IT. They have a very clear idea of how they want things done and want to keep as much of their business’ operation in house to ensure that it’s done in line with their doctrines. But this can be counterproductive and wasteful. A good outsourced IT provider will work in collaboration with your business to help guard against wasteful spending by putting in place an infrastructure that delivers exactly what the business needs, no more, no less.
That said, most solutions can be fairly easily scaled up to allow for growth, giving entrepreneurs the best of both worlds.