The technology a company chooses has a direct impact on productivity, profitability, and their customer service.
Choosing the right business technology tools can help a company operate more efficiently, find more productivity in employees’ days, and get ahead of the competition.
But just as easily, the wrong technology choices can hold companies back and have them paying higher costs for IT than they should be. Employees can easily get frustrated when their business tools aren’t allowing them to work as efficiently as they could.
In a survey of 5,000 employees at 22 different companies, less than 44% said they knew where to find the information required for their daily work.
What are some of the biggest mistakes made by companies when choosing their business technology?
Here are some of the common pitfalls that cause business owners to make costly decisions, and how to avoid them.
1. Taking a Piecemeal Approach
One of the most common mistakes made when choosing applications is seeing them as a singular work tool, rather than looking at them as an integrated part of your entire business toolkit.
Choosing apps one at a time without considering how they fit as one cog in your entire technology machine can lead to problems like:
- Applications not integration
- Lack of data sharing and problems with automation
- Inconsistent security policies
- Employees needing to learn vastly different user interfaces (UIs)
- App redundancy
- Cloud overload
The average number of duplicate apps per company is 3.6.
All the software, hardware, and apps your employees use to run your business on a daily basis, need to make up one cohesive ecosystem if you want your operations to be fully optimized.
2. Making a Decision Based on the Features List
Are you one of those people that quickly gets bored with an app and loves the “new car smell” of a shiny new app? It’s not unusual for a business owner or other manager to switch apps too often simply because they see something someone else is using and want to try it.
Getting blown over by a features list and making a snap decision can lead to problems down the road.
For example, you may find a new live chat app for your website that looks to have better features than what you use now. So, your team goes through the entire process of changing apps and setting up the new one to work on your site. Then when your team tries to connect the app to your CRM program (like the old one did), you learn it’s not compatible. Major problem!
It’s important to thoroughly review apps before adding them to your business workflow. You want to look at integrations, how they fit in with your current IT ecosystem, security, and whether you are adding redundancies.
3. Trying to Do Everything Themselves
The sales pages of cloud applications make everything look so easy. So, companies end up choosing tools and trying to integrate them themselves, rather than getting help from an IT professional.
This can lead to data migration problems, choosing tools that don’t fit your business objectives well, and to a company actually “breaking” productivity processes they worked hard to put in place.
When you work with a trusted IT professional, like Pro Tech Guy, you get the benefit of:
- Expert guidance
- An objective and expert opinion
- Warnings about software that is known to perform poorly
- Confirmation on whether or not a new tool fits in well with your current IT strategy
- Help with migrations and integrations
4. Thinking Cheaper is Better
A big mistake is only looking at an IT solution’s price tag, but not getting the full picture of overall return on investment. Buying cheaper rather than better can be very costly in the long run and it happens with both hardware and software.
Purchasing a cheap computer can mean major performance issues if it has only a little memory and no way to upgrade it. Cheaper PCs will also not usually last as long as higher priced computers that may seem more expensive at first, but may actually have a much better ROI.
When it comes to software choices, you may find that a SaaS tool is cheaper at the lowest plan level than another but ends up being too restrictive. When you move up a level, you may actually pay more than if you choose the option that seemed more expensive but had more features.
5. Not Getting End User Input
A major cause of cloud churn due to cloud tools not working out for a business is because the decision was made at the executive level without getting end user input.
The people that are working in the software every day are the ones that can most easily spot a problem with a potential new tool. They also will be the ones to know if a new IT solution is going to make their lives harder or easier – thus make their work more productive or not.
It’s important to include your end users in any technology solutions decisions made.
Need Help Choosing Your Technology Wisely?
Pro Tech Guy can help your Framingham business with smart technology choices that enhance your current IT ecosystem rather than cause problems.
Contact us today to learn more. Call 508-364-8189 or reach us online.