Information Technology Priorities
for Small Business
 

In a survey of 724 technology officers in businesses with fewer than 1,000 employees designed to show the decision criteria for small business technology spending, 37 percent said that managing their information technology (IT) budget was their top priority. Second on their list of concerns was IT maintenance at 26 percent.
compTIA Research study - revealing the latest trends in IT spending and priorities among small and mid-size businesses

At a global level, the small business market is quite healthy, and is growing at a rate faster than enterprise business.  The study revealed that 3 out of 4 small businesses are planning on hiring new employees, and approximately a third are planning on opening new business locations.

The small business market is heavily weighted towards the smaller businesses, with more than 80% of all small businesses employing between 1 and 9 people.  Even though these businesses are smaller in terms of people numbers, the revenues and spending of the small business represents the foundation of the economy.

Your focus on small business is critical to helping them to grow into successful enterprise operations.  When your services include accounting and tax services, bookkeeping and back-office support, or business and management consulting, you are in a position to assist your client businesses in making information technology decisions that will impact their operations now and well into the future.

Reduce the time and cost of information technology management by outsourcing application and data hosting to the experts.  Help your client focus on their business - not their business IT.

There are three distinct stages of technology adoption for small business, each delivering an additional capability to the business as user and operational demands grow.  What stage is your business at?

The first stage is establishing the basic infrastructure.  This includes the initial purchasing of the PC, printer, and general productivity software.

Next is the extension of the individual PC to the local area network, and then to the Internet.

Finally comes the extension of the local area network to remote users and access, where wide-area networks, virtual private networks, and server-based solutions are considered.
 

The business markets in the United States have already adopted a level of computerization, so the focus is generally on the extension of the infrastructure through local and wide area networking.  Any focus on initial infrastructure by small businesses in the US is largely centered around upgrading systems rather than initial computerization.

The popularity of of mobile devices and remote access are driving businesses to extend their infrastructure far beyond previous boundaries.  This, naturally, introduces additional complexity and increases service and maintenance costs. 
 

Outsourcing the IT infrastructure and management is often the best and most affordable way to extend the small business enterprise and provide secure remote and mobile access.