More businesses with fewer than 100 employees are planning to adopt new technologies than aren’t, according to the 2020 State of IT report released by Spiceworks. If you aren’t among them, there are a few reasons that you should be. Here, we’ll review those reasons, to give you a few points to think about as you consider your use of technology.
Better Technology Makes You More Relevant - and Thereby, Competitive
How would you feel if you walked into a financial planner’s office for assistance with your business’ budget and saw all of the employees working diligently at their desks, each making calculations with an abacus? Or if you were in the hospital for a procedure, and your anesthetist pulled out a mallet to prepare you for surgery?
Presumably, you’d leave.
While these are extreme examples, the same concept goes for any business. Technology is developed to improve workplace operations, making operations more efficient, more reliable, or more effective - if not some combination of the three. Failing to keep up with these improvements, as your competition does, will only put your business further behind the curve - making it harder to attract the clients and customers you need to maintain your revenue streams.
It also doesn’t hurt that the majority of people you are trying to attract to your business are looking for a provider that can outperform the competition - something that you cannot do if they are utilizing the latest and greatest solutions when you aren’t. Today, your hope is that the opposite situation is the case - your solutions being better than theirs.
Technology Can Boost Efficiency
For the sake of your business’ budget, its aforementioned relevance, the overall satisfaction level of your clientele, and a variety of other key factors… your business needs to operate efficiently. The longer your operations take, the more expensive they will prove to be for your business, and the less satisfied your clientele will become - again, especially if they are comparing you to an alternative provider.
There are many ways that IT solutions can prove to be a benefit in this way. Automation can reduce the amount of time your employees spend trudging through rote tasks, freeing up quite a bit of time in any department. As a result, these tasks can be completed with machine accuracy, while your employees can simultaneously be productive towards their goals and objectives.
There’s Improved Security Potential in Technology
You may have picked up on how a lot of cybersecurity threats now rely on the inherent vulnerability of human beings, with phishing attacks and ransomware being such popular means of attack. Why is this the case? Well, technology has improved to the point where it is often easier to take advantage of the user than it is to breach the system - assuming that the system in question has the proper safeguards implemented.
While it obviously can’t be said that these safeguards will always keep your business’ data safe, there is a definite increase in the frequency of cyberattacks that target user vulnerabilities, rather than software ones. In fact, according to a survey that the Small Business Trends website maintains, phishing and social engineering were experienced by 43 percent of their respondents. According to some sources, a full 76 percent of businesses reported being the victims of a phishing attack in 2018.
Why is this? Well, to be frank, many cybercriminals are reconsidering how their attacks should take shape as security solutions have improved. If the weakest point in a business’ security is the user, it makes more sense to target the user.
While this means that any business needs to seriously consider training their users to spot threats, it also implies that today’s solutions are capable of defending against many of widely available threats today. So, if you combine user awareness with the technology solutions available today, it should only increase your security - relying on your users alone simply won’t cut it.
This is just the beginning of how information technology can benefit a business like yours. To find out more, reach out to the team here at Business Solutions & Software Group! We can be reached at (954) 575-3992.
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