IT challenges for SMBs and the impact they could be having on your business.
In today’s fast-paced technological landscape, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) must embrace digitization and automation to stay competitive and gain advantages. However, SMBs often encounter unique challenges that larger companies seldom face. This blog highlights some of the common IT challenges for SMBs and their potential impact on business performance.
The Top 5 IT Challenges for SMBs
A lack of IT experience.
Larger companies often benefit from their ability to staff an IT department. This means their in-house resources usually have the combined experience for most problems they meet, so they very rarely have to turn to consultation from third parties. While some SMBs are certainly able to hire a dedicated full-time IT manager, not all have this luxury. You may simply have to settle with an existing member of staff, with different areas of expertise.
Managing the scalability of your IT.
We all want our businesses to thrive, and as your SMB grows, so does the pressure on your IT infrastructure. The system you began with may have been suitable initially, but it may struggle to cope with the increased workflow as your growth accelerates. An IT system that isn’t scalable could cause you to be inundated with reactive tasks instead of proactive ones that help prevent issues.
Maintaining IT Security & Compliance.
Your IT security is just as important as it is for the big players in the market. The challenge that small and medium-sized businesses face is keeping compliant with government policy and regulation. The time and effort it takes to monitor such rapidly changing legislation and ensure that you can adapt to it, often leaves SMBs falling behind. This could be bad news when it stands in the way of securing new contracts.
Time management.
In order to remain competitive it’s vitally important for small businesses to keep ahead of the curve, but it’s not at simple as it sounds. When adopting new innovative technologies to stand out from the pack, your staff could face numerous challenges before they can even begin implementing them. How is the new system going to interact with what’s already in place? Do additional systems need to be looked into to work in tandem with it? We all know that staff time is one of the most precious resources for SMBs, but if the responsibility to use and maintain the new technology falls to current members of staff this could end up monopolising their valuable time and them away from other work.
The cost of Technology.
Ah, the sordid topic of coin. The cost of maintaining and upgrading technology has been a bullet all companies have had to bite for some time. When trying to stay ahead of the game many businesses bring in expertise to manage the adoption of emerging technologies. This expense is felt more keenly by SMBs who simply do not have the same resources at their disposal to tackle these costs. Sadly, this might discourage you from carrying out innovative projects that could ultimately serve to boost your company profile and reputation.
How SMBs Can Tackle Their IT Challenges
When faced with IT challenges like the above, SMBs often turn to a Managed Service Provider, like us, to partner with. This decision means the MSP partner can manage and ease the burden of day-to-day IT operations for staff. It also provides access to a larger pool of IT expertise capable of advising on IT Strategy going forward. Check out our blog, 5 Things Your IT Provider Should be Doing, if you are unsure you are getting value from your current provider.
