In the world of small business today, no entrepreneur can afford to be a Luddite! As the business landscape becomes more and more reliant on an agile approach to technology, all businesses recognize the importance of ensuring that their technological infrastructure is able to meet today’s challenges while preparing their business for tomorrow’s. This is a never ending battle for all SMEs and it’s a battle that none can afford to fight alone.
Although many entrepreneurs and CEOs may employ a CIO (Chief Information Officer) IT Manager or even a outsourced Managed IT Services, it behooves them to have a finger on the pulse when it comes to knowing and understanding the technological needs of the terrain they occupy as well as having at least a layman’s understanding of their business’ IT concerns. Only when both parties are on the same page can the ship be steered effectively in the right direction. Here are some of the areas in which CIOs are most concerned this year, and this season.
Marshaling your work force’s productivity
Summer is well and truly here and with it comes the summer slump; the seasonal slump in productivity caused by the hot weather and employees becoming distracted easily and staring wistfully out the window and fantasizing about ice cream. There are many ways in which you can marshal your employees’ productivity but among the most effective ways is ensuring that their IT infrastructure allows them to do their job with peak efficiency, knowing that none of their time and effort is wasted. Using outsourced managed services is particularly helpful here as your service provider will regularly audit your infrastructure to ensure that it’s fit for purpose and optimized for peak efficiency.
Data security
The recent changes to data handling all over Europe via the recent GDPR legislation has cast a spotlight in the issue of data security. As data thieves become more and more wily, ambitious and resourceful, so too must businesses arm themselves with robust security redundancies to ensure that their customer and client data is kept secure and responsibly handled. Ransomware is another huge security concern for SMEs. With a Ransomware attack occurring once every 40 seconds, CIOs must be ever vigilant when it comes to this amorphous threat.
Keeping it cloud
There are numerous advantages to a cloud based IT infrastructure, especially if you have employees working remotely or spread out across several sites. Cloud based solutions are convenient, secure, can be accessed by devices with little local storage space and can be scaled up or down as the needs of your business change. But with these benefits come specific challenges. CIOs wage a constant battle to ensure that cloud costs are kept manageable and that multi-cloud strategies are used to prevent contractual lock-in and spiralling costs at a later date.
Data analytics, a blessing and a curse
All entrepreneurs know that paying close attention to their analytics is an essential part of corporate strategy. It teaches them what’s working and what isn’t what areas of the business are a money pit and which are facilitating growth or driving profits. Thus, CIOs need to find elegant ways of parsing huge volumes of data and presenting it to CEOs in a digestible and actionable way.
When you and your CIO keep on top of these issues, the path to success is that much clearer.