Your technology should help your business grow, not hold it back. Often, we see organizations struggle with technology because their current system wasn’t designed well for them. At TAG Solutions we help businesses grow smarter and stronger with their technology. One of the things we evaluate is whether their IT infrastructure is helping their business or actually working against them.
Here are three warning signs that your IT setup is slowing down your growth:
- Constant downtime or performance issues
- Security gaps that block expansion
- IT can’t keep up with business needs.
Constant downtime or performance issues:
Employees are often frustrated with slow systems or frequent outages. The problem can be as simple as slow internet, apps crashing, or aging devices. Problems like this don’t just annoy your employees; it will kill productivity, drain resources, and cost your organization money. This is an obvious problem that has a huge impact on growth. Employees may miss deadlines or have delays on critical projects due to downtime. Your team cannot get their work done efficiently when they are constantly waiting on the system to work. Time is also wasted on fixing IT instead of doing real work.
This won’t only affect your employees; it could make your customers upset too. Customers may be waiting longer due to service outages or poor response times. Productivity will drop, resulting in less work being done to support your customers. Even a few minutes of downtime a week adds up, and for some industries like healthcare, a reliable system is necessary. To help fix downtime you can assess your network and system to identify performance issues, replace aging hardware, implement proactive monitoring, and partner with an IT provider like TAG Solutions who can resolve issues quickly, so you don’t need to worry about it. TAG solutions offers managed IT services and IT support designed to reduce downtime and improve overall business IT security.
Security gaps that block expansion
The next warning sign your IT is slowing down growth is security gaps that block expansion. When business is growing, there are more customers, more data, and often more locations or employees. If your security infrastructure isn’t growing with your business, expansion can actually increase the risk of attack. MSP cybersecurity often gets added in bits and pieces as companies grow, but this patchwork approach creates blind spots which can leave your business vulnerable and potentially block future expansion.
Security gaps can slow growth in many ways. First, it exposes you to data breaches which can lead to fines, lawsuits, and tarnish your reputation. Many people do not want to work with a company that previously had a big data breach because they worry that their
information could be leaked as well. Security gaps will make you a target for cyberattacks. When this happens, your organization could be down for a long time, and never fully recover. In order to help fix your security gaps you need to conduct a risk assessment, implement solutions like multi-factor authentication (MFA) and stronger passwords, train your team to recognize risks, and partner with someone who specializes in cyber threat prevention. A good security plan should also include phishing attack awareness, and regular employee security awareness training.
IT can’t keep up with business needs
Finally, if your IT can’t keep up with your business needs, then your IT may be slowing growth. When IT is reactive instead of proactive, something needs to change. If your team is constantly trying to fix connections, struggling with onboarding, or not updating the system, then your IT infrastructure isn’t an asset; it is a liability.
If your IT can’t keep up, then it is clear that it will slow your business down. There are an endless number of ways this can hurt growth. For example, you may miss opportunities to adopt new technology or automation. The onboarding of new employees or clients may be slow, decreasing productivity. It can also delay projects if there is limited IT capacity. And, finally, your organization may lose its competitive advantage due to your slow IT.
To help fix this problem, you should create a long-term IT roadmap that aligns with your business goals. This way you can make sure your IT is keeping up with your business needs. You can also outsource repetitive IT tasks and bring in external ability to give advice on how to improve your system. TAG Solutions offers vCIO services which can help your organization get ahead of IT and make sure it is aligned with where your business is going.
Technology should not be the thing holding back your business growth. If you are experiencing any of the warning signs- constant downtime, security gaps blocking expansion, or your IT can’t keep up- then you should reassess your IT. TAG Solutions can help your IT be something to help your business grow to where you want it to be.
