Business + IT Insights

Your business uses technology for everything. From email to point of sale to bookkeeping to communication - technology is involved. The problem is, technology, or IT, isn’t what you do. It’s what you use, but not what you like to manage.

Running a business is hard enough, let alone managing all the technological pieces. In today’s world, IT is integral to the success of a business, but too often, business leaders wear the hat of a Chief Information Officer, among all the other hats they wear, and it causes their business to suffer.

What you need is a Virtual CIO (vCIO).

Whether your company outsources IT support, staffs an in-house department or operates on a hybrid approach, your technology team needs to budget, plan and position your company for growth. If this doesn’t sound like your situation, you need to rethink your IT strategy.

You’re working on a time-sensitive project, and you’re unable to access important files on the company server. Or, you’re in the middle of an important Skype meeting, and your Internet connection severs. Sometimes downtime is unpredictable – like in the case of natural disasters and weather emergencies – but the result is always the same: decreased productivity and profits.

If technology is at the forefront of your business, a so-so IT provider weakens your competitive edge.

Making the switch to another provider may seem scary at first, but gathering the right information up front lessens the burden. Doing so also positions you to solve current user issues and build a better roadmap for the future of your company.

Growing companies are wising up to the importance of having strong technology leaders. 

But succeeding at hiring IT employees today is an uphill climb, especially in a technology landscape where winning talent is quickly scooped up by other companies, or the cost of keeping them is too great.

Business technology is the backbone of most North American companies today, small and large. In 45% of these companies, CIOs or information technology directors report to CFOs or finance directors, a fact that emphasizes the importance of effective communication and a true understanding of departmental needs to manage the relationship between information technology and finance.

Businesses no longer simply rely on information technology (IT), using it as a convenient crutch to conduct daily operations with automated ease. Today's businesses leverage innovative technology solutions for powerful and sustainable business growth.  This is why outsourced IT support is such a hot topic. You may have a perfectly good in-house IT department whom you rely on for all those IT hiccups and hurdles, but are you truly leveraging technology in a way that improves and grows your business?