Should Your Business See a Bigger Role for IT?

With every business having at least some revenue generation in their list of priorities, it is important that an organization understands how technology can help eliminate inefficiency through improved collaboration and productivity. Let’s consider a few modern tools and solutions that can help a business as it strives towards its goals.

Communication

Communication is well-known to be a crucial aspect of any business’ success, so it only makes sense that leveraging the capabilities that today’s tech offers is a strategy that so many organizations have embraced. With so many options now available—including Voice-over-Internet-Protocol telephony and video conferencing, email, and other all-encompassing collaboration platforms—businesses have the means to boost their productivity readily available.

Many of these communication platforms are unified, giving you and your team access to a comprehensive suite of tools to use. That way, your investment goes much further and is more guaranteed to provide you with the return you need and expect.

Automation

The easiest way to expand the role IT plays in your business is to embrace automation. Today’s software provides the opportunity to improve your business by shifting its priorities. Automation can take the mandatory tasks that create workflow and coordination within the separate departments of your business and remove the need to assign human resources to complete them. This allows your staff to focus on the revenue generating parts of their job while removing the time and effort that is typically required to support that coordination and efficient operations. This shift in strategy can really provide some stark benefits when trying to create a more effective workflow. 

Some of the parts of your business that can be improved by utilizing automation include: 

• Inventory Management
• Security
• Supply chain management
• Sales and marketing 
• Customer relationships

...and more.

By committing to automating certain rote, yet mandatory tasks, you can expect more productive endeavors to be successful. That’s the name of the game in business.

Security

Security is seemingly everyone’s favorite answer when asked what you should be investing more of your business’ capital in. There is a good reason for that: there are more threats than ever. SMBs account for half of all cyberattacks, so it is important to put the solutions in place to solve the cybersecurity problems your organization faces. Some strategies you should consider include:

• Regular risk assessments
• Comprehensive staff training
• Penetration testing
• Network, server, and website audits
• Additional software investments

Successfully accomplishing those strategies will help you reduce and eliminate:

• Theft (money, service, data)
• System corruption
• Regulatory and compliance fines
• Legal fees
• Loss of customer confidence
• Loss of intellectual property
• Damage to reputation

One Up Solutions Northwest can help you expand your IT with our multiple services, including comprehensive monitoring and management and our hardware and software procurement services. Our experts can help get your business where you want to go. Call us today at (503) 278-5011 to learn more.