Assessing Technology Risk of Small Business - SCORE.PPTX
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Assessing Technology Risk of Small Business - SCORE.PPTX
- 1. Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc. Assessing Technology Risk in Small Businesses
- 2. Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc.Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc. CMIT Solutions of Stamford • Your Technology Team – We keep you advised and running • Top Tier of 130 offices • 6 years of year over year growth • Continuous Technology Solution Pallet growth and refreshing • Sr. Dean of CMIT Pacesetters • Small Business Specialists
- 3. Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc.Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc. 2010 NSBA Technology Survey • According to the survey, despite the challenge posed by keeping up with the rapid pace of change in technology, 98 percent of respondents think it is important to keep up with new technology. • “Small-business owners have to serve many critical functions within their business, including chief technology officer,” NSBA press release
- 4. Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc.Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc. 2010 NSBA Technology Survey 57% of small business owners spend an hour a week, OF THEIR OWN TIME, taking care of technology problems. 32 % spend 2-3 hours per week. 11% are spending 4+ hours per week
- 5. Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc.Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc. …. And how much time is lost weekly on “figuring it out”?
- 6. Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc.Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc. Small Business Technology Assessment
- 7. Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc.Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc. Typically Technology Spend $- $2,000 $4,000 $6,000 $8,000 $10,000 $12,000 $14,000 $16,000 $18,000 $20,000 3 PCs 10 PCs 15 PCs yearly $ in technology yearly $ in technology 6.9% of revenue on IT
- 8. Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc.Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc. How well is technology meeting the needs of the business? What is holding them back from doing more faster? What gremlins are lurking? Are you positioned from growth?
- 9. Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc.Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc. Assessment – The basics Does the computer match the job Anywhere email Computer skills that support productivity Adequate, outdated or manual data backup solution QuickBooks fluency Word processing and spreadsheet software Anywhere secure file sharing Anywhere computing Industry Software Broadband internet connection Proper Licensing Bring your own technology
- 10. Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc.Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc. Does your computer match the job you need it to do?
- 11. Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc.Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc. Anywhere email
- 12. Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc.Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc. Computer skills Fluency in Windows or Mac Word, Excel, Powerpoint QuickBooks Your favorite browser Internet surfing
- 13. Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc.Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc. Protect Your Data 1 onsite copy 1 offsite copy You don’t have to remember to do it Set up by someone that knows that folders are important errors are checked and followed up on Restore Test
- 14. Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc.Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc. Outside Assessments How does your technology selections stack up to best practice in small business? Security Assessment Intruition Assessment Disaster Recovery Assessment Cloud Readiness Assessment You don’t know what you don’t know
- 15. Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc.Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc. Risk Assessment Data Theft Malware Employees Internet Wireless Internet Reputation Downtime Computer Virus Hardware failure Insufficient computer skills Patches and upgrades Network Internet Telephone Power failure
- 16. Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc.Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc. Growth Assessment Do they know what will trigger the need for a server Hardware refresh plan 12-18 month technology plan Standardized desktop Collaboration environment Technology knowledge Delegation of technology Day to day expansion
- 17. Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc.Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc. The Challenge
- 18. Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc.Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc. Do IT myself? Do I know how? Do I have the time to figure IT out?
- 19. Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc.Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc. Goal Balance cost of professional advice versus the immediate value that they provide Cost vs Business Impact
- 20. Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc.Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc. Should I pay for prevention or deal with it if it happens?
- 21. Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc.Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc. Goal decrease incidents of “something going wrong” resulting in a material wasted of time and/or money
- 22. Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc.Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc. Travel Agency Story • Alcatra Media Tours • 75 employees • New computers produced 20% increase in sales in 1 week; 40% increase in the first month • Prospects were on hold too long and hanging up • Agents waiting for 30 seconds for 1 page • Employee moral increase • No one had vocalized just how bad it was
- 23. Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc.Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc. Resources NSBA – 2010 Technology Survey http://www.nsba.biz/docs/nsba_2010_technology_survey.pd f Top Technology Risks – Intel http://www.nor- tech.com/solutions/dox/Top_10_Technology_Risks.pdf
- 24. Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc.Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc. Resources www.cmitsolutions.com/stamford click resources and events www.cmitsolutions.com/blog Sign up for our weekly QuickTips by going to www.cmitsolutions.com/stamford, click resources then fill in the form on the right or hand me your business card CMIT Solutions YouTube Channel www.youtube.com/user/cmitsolutions/videos Email me at stamford@cmitsolutions.com to be added to our Chat & Chew Webinars. (May 10 Quickbooks, May 24 Win 7 features) Thank you!
- 25. Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc.Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc.
- 26. Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc.Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc.
- 27. Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc.Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc. How to Pick Technology Vendors & Services
- 28. Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc.Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc. One-time purchases Features Cost Market Leader Reputation Easy to use Easy to work with Support Company strength Cost to operate Training Integration Hardware-Software- Internet Services
- 29. Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc.Confidential – © CMIT Solutions, Inc. IT Professional Services Companies • Focused on my size company • Established business with employees • What is the client experience like? • Do they know the technology I use? • Industry credentials • Will they take responsibility for their work? • Response time agreement • Rates • Service Area
Notas do Editor
- Thank you Vance and all of you for inviting me here today. I am very humbled to be asked to speak today. Vance has been my counselor for 7 years now and I want you to know that I regularly share with other business professionals here and nationally the impact Vance, David Sloan, and Ruth have made in my development as a successful business owner. I say with pride that I have a SCORE coach. Since we want to conclude the meeting on time, I’d like to request that we keep questions until the end. I have plenty of time after the meeting concludes and happy to entertain questions after today from you. It’s my modest way of giving to all of you, who give so freely of your time and knowledge to others. The presentation I’ve put together for you focuses on assessing and coaching small business owners on managing and leveraging technology for the benefit of their businesses. My goal is to arm you with some additional tools to go to your clients with. Things that will help you evaluate the state of their technology and know when the time has arrived to replace do-it-yourself and assistance from family & friends with professionals that made their living from helping business harness technology to move their business’s forward and increase the bottom line. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Presentation Checklist Thank you’s Introduce myself, my company and my background State the goal or what I want them to remember Provide an interesting fact Grab their attention in the beginning Start with a story or some statistics Paint a picture Ask someone to give me 15 min and 5 minute warning
- A little more about CMIT Solutions. CMIT Solutions is a national IT Services company that provides an outsourced IT department to companies that don’t want to have the expense and bother of creating an IT competency in-house. We assess the technology state and needs of a company then work to provide them a flat-fee to maintain, support and handle technology projects that the business may need. CMIT Solutions maintains its own local staff, leverages staff regionally and nationally to handle peak time and niche technology and has partnerships with all the major technology players. The driver with our clients is first education, advisement and planning and then getting it all done. Our services span installation, training, support and design. Our clients are typically 5-50 employees and span every industry. Our client’s have understood the value of delegation. They want to focus on their business and want to leave technology to a professional that works in a small business budget. I opened up the Stamford, Ct office in 2005 after a successful career working for companies running their technology departments. Myself and the team I have built are passionate about seeing our clients grow. I am the CTO for my clients. What makes CMIT Solutions different then a lot of franchises? CULTURE Living their Belief Statement What do I get from my franchisor? A LOT - Technology Vendors, Marketing, Sales Training, New Products, incredible network of engineers and CIO-CEOs Pacesetter group – P2P coaching, divide and conquor, short story about Vance and David Sloan – IT Acquisition Cookbook -> Strategic Referral Partners
- The Small Business Administration 2010 survey revealed many technology trends in small business. As you know a business owner has many hats to wear…. They need to decide which hats to be an expert at and which hats need to sit on the head of someone else. There are technology decisions in EVERY business. This survey reported on: The amount of time spend on a computer Technology tools are being used Internet services used Who is responsible for tech support – 36% pay an outside company; 36% have a staff member; 25% do it themselves; 2% friends and family Biggest technology challenge – security (52%) cost of needed upgrades (51%) Telecommuting
- The Small Business Administration 2010 survey revealed many technology trends in small business. Among them is the fact although its challenging, 98% of small business owners feel its important to stay current with technology. Additionally, the survey measured the amount of time that small business owners typically spend fixing technology problems. The answer too much!
- The survey didn’t ask how much time is spent by small business owners figuring stuff out on their own. Based on our years of experience, this is another area that small business needs to be more strategic amount. Unless you have time to burn, a business owner needs to keep razor focus on operating and growing their core business, not diverting their time to non core activities such as figuring out the best company to host their website on. Although capital preservation is important, speed to market and generating revenue is equally and sometimes more important. Ask your client how much time they waste on fixing or figuring out technology and what they would have done with that time if they devoted it to product development, marketing or sales. Next Slide
- Next I would like to walk you through an assessment you can do with your clients. Since we are first a education and advisement company and then a “get IT done” company, we need this basic information in order to provide any advise and services. Although small business needs are very similar, each company has different existing IT which is to a different degree properly aligned with their business needs. I have adapted this from the assessment we do whenever we meet a potential client. We offer a small business assessment to companies with 3+ computer free of charge as a part of meet & greet sales step. This is at no cost to them but does requires 1-2 hours of their time. For clients with less than 3 computers, I offer a 1 hour phone assessment. The next few slides start with the must haves for every business and then move to the needs of a company as it gets more employees and contractors. Once a company has a product, gains clients, has some cash flow, it needs to turn its attention to positioning for growth. Its always easier to work with an example. I’m going to give you a moment to choose one of your clients that you will now do this assessment on.
- Roughly (very roughly) a $1,200- 2,400 per employee for operational IT spend. Hardware & Software is additional. The average small company spends 6.9% of revenue on IT (mid 4.1% large 4.1%).
- So the assessment I am going to walk you through moves through 4 stages. Since many of the companies you counsel have 3 or less employees, we’ll spend more time on the needs of that size, but I will also include some self-assessment materials for larger companies. In technology the driver is number of employees (and sometimes number of applications) rather than sales dollars, that correlate to technology spend. Another way of framing the questions on the screen are: current state, next stage, risk and positioning for growth.
- We will dig into more detail the items in the first column as ALL companies regardless of size and age need these. The second column indicates technology ingredients that will be based on your personal situation. Next Slide
- (GO LIGHT ON THIS PAGE TO Keep on Time) Computer must match the job the person is doing; giving yourself or employees inadequate (aka slow) machines will only cost you productivity Understand the difference between a knowledge (information) worker and a computer user and order computers that have the right memory and processor speed for the job (rephrase) As tempting as it may be to grab that old computer and re-commission it, unless its going to be used for occasionally email and surfing, the cost of keeping it running and its slow speed will likely cost you more than a new computer. Computers over 3 years of age should not be considered. Those 2-3 years of age, may be put into use if memory is added. Remember that computers have moving parts and the electronic components do break down over time. Hard drives are the first to go, followed by irratic problems that are often caused by poor electrical flow in processors, memory chips and mother boards. Dual monitors are must for any computer user that works with more than a few programs at the same time. Study after study has shown immediate productivity gains, by adding a second monitor. Consider too the software that is loaded on your computer. Get good advise on what to use “free” ware for and what you should spend the money on. For example, many people buy Adobe Pro, thinking that is the only way to create PDF files. Not true there are many free programs that create pdfs file that are perfectly adequate for most situations. Google docs/ Google apps versus Microsoft Office suite it also a choice we see many clients make incorrectly one way or the other.
- If they handle more than 25 emails a day, don’t let them settle for an email solution that doesn’t provide syncronized email that can be read & processed no matter what device it is worked on. Anywhere – Any Device for email, contacts, calendaring is a huge boost to everyone’s productivity. Next Slide
- The computer proficiency of computer users is often overlooked. Fluency in these things at a MINIMUM are necessary no matter who you are. That is unless you don’t mind taking longer to do things that necessary. The internet is filled with free training. YouTube and Microsoft training are 2 of my favorites. Someone just told me about Grovo.com and I’ve started checking that out too which has thousands of video lessons covering Internet products you love or didn’t know about. Technology providers like CMIT Solutions that focus on keeping your computers running AND helping you leverage technology offer one-to-one or small group training and coaching at very affordable prices. Next Slide
- I so often want to lead with this slide. So many businesses are still not adequately protecting their data.. Loss of data still ranks as one of the top reasons that small business fail. Many people also feel that saving their critical information (such as a copy of their QuickBooks file) to a flash drive is a commercial grade data backup solution. Don’t be that person that realizes the importance of this only after having gone through a data loss situation. Yes it doesn’t happen to everyone, but 1 in 10 users will experience a data loss. The items on this slide are the requirements for a commercial solution that you can trust. Next Slide It is reported that 80% of intellectual property is saved in email; the other 15+% is elsewhere on your hard drive of someone else's I would argue that if you not serious about protecting your data you are not serious about your business.
- There are some aspects that self-evaluation may not give you what you need. Enlist the help of an outside party from time to time. Keeping up with the change in technology is watching a moving target. Reach out to other business owners and technology advisors to make sure you are using the current main stream technology choices. This can be hard because the technology news you often hear about in the mainstream media is for companies that are larger than 100 employees. Small business technology has different leaders. An outside assessment will also help you to know what you don’t know. Next Slide
- There are some aspects that self-evaluation may not give you what you need. Enlist the help of an outside party from time to time. Contingency Planning is figure out ahead of time, what you will do to keep the operation going when a break down occurs. You should consider the most common breakdowns. What will you do if you phone service goes down, what happens if the internet goes down, what happens if the xyz machines goes down. What will you do if you get hit with a multi- hour or mult-day power outage. What are the most time sensitive your business must perform? Consider what those are for each person in your organization. Write down that list and mentally walk through what you would do. You may find you need to add some contingency “todos” to your operation. . Next Slide
- Make sure you have a technology plan that aligns with you business plans. Regular planning in all the areas of your business needs to become a habit. Devote time quarterly to planning and actioning what needs to be done. Know what are the triggers are signal the need for your first server. Once you your business is over 2 years of age, make sure you establish an equipment refresh budget. Avoid downtime by replacing equipment at its end of life. Use standards to avoid undue complex IT environment. This will save you big money. An area we see that a lot of companies don’t plan for is planning for collaboration. This may signal a need for a electronic collaboration solution such as Microsoft Sharepoint. Collaboration tools provide document strorage, versioning, centralized calendaring and contracts, areas designated to special projects and so on. Consider yourself and your staff yearly and come up with technology skills and knowledge topics that are must have to stay productive. Finally, if your not outsourcing you IT, consider whether that has become necessary. Align yourself with a company that can handle your day to day computer needs as well as handle the heavy lifting technology projects.
- How that have completed the technology self assessment, let me address some of the questions and thoughts that have been going through your head. Next Slide
- A lot of business owners and employees consider the Do-It-Yourself route. This is not necessarily bad as it can save you hard earned cash in the bank. You do want to consider whether you already know how, know someone that does (make sure they really do!). Watch carefully how much “figuring out” time its going to cost and whether that is worth it. Next Slide
- Your goal is to balance carefully the cost (hard earned cash in the bank) of outside professional services versus the real impact it will make in your business.
- Some of the things that you noted may fall into the “well its only going to cost me if it happens” “that doesn’t really happen”, “that won’t happen to me” “ the chances are so small”. Is it really worth spending money on prevention versus just dealing with it if it every happens? When I have these conversations with myself (and I do!) I think about what that money could do else where in my business. I consider what it can do for my household. I’m a small business just like you. I have seen prevention pay in the long run. I get my teeth cleaned every 4 months, I get the oil on my car changed and even though I run a computer services business, I still have my staff maintain and check my computer, its backups and so on. I’ve lived through a hard drive crash only to find a problem with a data backup vendor, I’ve lost days rebuilding my computer because I didn’t keep my updates updated. It just doesn’t pay. In my business, I am filling to provide flat rate services to a company, because when we are in control, preventative maintenance and monitoring is applied and it allows me to make a profit every month not because we have high rates, but because it works.
- Consider the consequences that could occur if IT happens. If they would cost too much, you must consider the cost of mitigating them.
- 40% increase in first month Reduced expenses (prospects on phone shorter reduced toll-free) $30,000 ROI was 2 days. Freed up 20 hours per week of management time
- There are lot of great resources to help you.
- I would like to offer to all of you counselors an invitation to our Chat & Chew Webinars – We do these every There are lot of great resources to help you. Finding ones that are focused on small business technology is what we are all about. We produce regular blog articles and highlight other good internet sources and news to help small business stay on top of the moving landscape of technology change. You can email me at stamford@cmitsolutions.com for a copy of this presentation. At this time I’d like to take any questions you may have. I’ll start with those in the chat box and then move onto live ones. Thank you and feel free to email me with any feedback or questions.