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Are You Getting the Best Technology Advice for Your Business?

Who is your Technical Advisor? Is it your neighbor? Your kids? That teenager who mows your lawn? 

If you’re choosing technology for your business based upon recommendations from people who aren’t really IT professionals, you could end up making some costly choices.

For example, say you’re looking for video conferencing tool that your team can use to speak to each other and with potential customers and clients. Your kids tell you that Discord is what they all use, and it’s great. 

So, you have everyone at your office install the app, but they quickly realize it’s not working well for scheduling conference calls with clients. The reason being that it’s not an app designed for business, it’s an app created for gamers. A better suggestion for you would have been Zoom or Skype for Business.

The technology investments you make have a significant impact on your business and they’re perhaps the most impactful expenditures you can make. That’s why it’s important to get the help of an IT pro that can act as an outsourced Chief Information Officer (CIO) and help you make smart, effective tech decisions.

The Benefits of Getting the Right Tech Advice

In 2020, 44% of businesses plan to increase their tech spending, which is up from 39% in 2019. Spending those dollars efficiently can mean the difference between a banner year with more sales, or a year of frustration trying to improve workflows.

Genuine Technology Group offers our CIO as a service to give businesses of any size the technical expertise they need to set and implement technical strategies and choose applications that are value-added.

When you’re getting advice from friends or family when it comes to your business tech, they may not have the same insight as a firm that works with tech day in and day out and that has seen what works for companies and what doesn’t.

Here are the benefits of getting advice from an IT pro.

You Gain Years of Industry Knowledge

Without having to hire your own in house CIO, you gain the benefit of years of industry knowledge that can keep you from choosing problematic applications and instead point you to ones proven to help companies succeed. 

You’re gaining the total combined knowledge of multiple team members when working with an IT professional as well, backed by an in depth understanding of the mechanics of how the technology functions.

Planning for Integration

Many business owners choose one business app, then another, and then another, without having a cohesive plan in place for using them all together. This often results in redundancies and duplication of abilities.

An IT pro takes a full view of your technology infrastructure and how each part of it will integrate. Through this approach, they can often save you money by helping you reduce the amount of software subscriptions you need.

Base Technology Recommendations on Staff Needs

When that large version of the iPhone first came out a few years back, one sales manager of a building materials company had them issued to his whole sales team, thinking that the newest gadget would make them more productive.

What happened was the sales team ended up having to switch between the inconveniently large phone and their personal smartphones to do their work. If they’d been consulted ahead of time, the sales manager would’ve realized that those giant iPhones were just too big to carry around and handle easily.

An IT professional will take staff needs, bottlenecks, and other challenges into consideration when making recommendations, so you’ll have a much better chance of addressing issues through effective tech choices.

Ensuring Security is Covered

Not all applications have the same type of data security. If you choose a cloud storage platform without the proper encryption, it can mean a data breach and potential data security compliance violation (HIPAA, PCI, etc.).

If you’re just trusting software recommendations from friends, as well meaning as they may be, they may be completely unfamiliar with the cybersecurity needs of your company. A professional acting as your outsourced CIO, will have security on the top of any software evaluation list. 

Ability to Measure Technology Impacts

Is that new team messaging app really improving efficiency? It’s hard to know if you don’t know how to measure the impacts of technology on your business. An IT professional will know what KPIs to use to give you the data you need so you’ll know when to stay with a program and when it’s just not serving you well.

Plan for a Technology Efficient Future with Your CIO  

Our CIO as a service is designed to give you a key competitive advantage that’s affordable for any size company. You don’t have to be a large enterprise corporation to get collaborative and forward-thinking technology guidance. 

Contact us today and we’ll help you take a bird’s eye view of your technology strategy. Call 971-288-0880 or reach us online.