Dealing with Technology Vendors as a Small Business
In today’s world many little businesses struggle to withhold up with technologies to wait on their business needs. You can’t turn on the TV without seeing an ad from some company telling you how they can give you all the advice you need. Maybe you need a geek from the local technology orderly market to approach in the unlit and white car to fix everything. There is no shortage of vendors out there who claim to have everything you need. The exertion is in luminous which one of them to bear.
I have been consulting in the technology field for ten years now. I have seen all forms of both substantial and not-so-great vendors. This is truly a mine field for any puny business looking for assist making technical decisions. I will attempt to abet the non-technical business owner communicate with those of us indoctrinated in geek enlighten.
The following 7 items will back when evaluating technology vendors.
1. Trust your instincts.
First and foremost, you have to understand that you don’t need to be a technically trained person to know what bull excrement smells like. If you are working with a vendor that consistently makes you feel like you are getting ripped off, you probably are.
Owning a business usually means that you have to be proficient dealing with people. To be successful you have to be really capable at reading people. This applies to your relationships with vendors. A superior technology vendor will go out of their plan to not only meet your needs, but to do it in a plot that helps you understand what they are doing and why it is necessary.
2. Do your research.
What makes them the expert? Before you ask someone to advance in and evaluate your technology needs, you should always stare into their qualifications. I suggest that all businesses ask for references from perspective vendors. If you are a specialized business you should ask for similar references to your company. If you are a tiny bank, for example, the company should be familiar with the highly specialized needs of the banking industry, regulatory issues, and know what type of systems will fit your sized institution. Check with the Better Business Bureau for any claims against them as well. (www.bbb.org)
One thing to be cautious of is looking for the letters unhurried names as proof of their success. Not all tremendous techs have MCSE, CCNA, A+, BS, MBA, etc gradual their names. These can be gracious indicators that a person has spent a expansive deal of time in class and taking tests. You should see for experience in the accurate world as well. What have they done in the industry? In most cases I would seize the advice of a successful tech with ten years experience and the respect of their peers over the thought of a novel graduate from any university. Life teaches us in ways that books cannot. I am in no scheme trying to diminish the importance of obtaining an education. It is simply to raise awareness to the fact that there are people out there that pride themselves on getting certifications. They have tiny to no experience in applying that knowledge and simply go out and prefer tests. Accomplish distinct you check for their correct experience and weigh their advice accordingly.
Ensure the vendor has a confidentiality agreement in state with you prior to working with them on any level. Your clients question you to protect their private information from outside sources. You have a responsibility to ensure that whoever you have working on your network will be able to do this effectively for you as well.
3. Know your limitations.
If you went to the hospital with a broken arm, would you sit and argue with the doctor about the best diagram to station it? (Doctors are not allowed to reply that!) You have requested this vendor arrive in and give you information. Don’t go out and read a “Dummies” book on fixing computers and then argue with everything the representative says.
Clients inquire of that I advance out and evaluate their needs based on my conception of the IT field. I can’t assure you how many times someone with small to no training has argued with me over industry standard IT security principles and whether they are essential. Many times it is to conceal a feeling of inadequacy because they are responsible for the network and feel threatened by the fact that I am pointing out deficiencies. The bottom line is you should know your limitations. Don’t rob things personally. Win out of the contrivance and let the expert support you.
However, do not recall their word at face value! I am all for shopping around and getting a second or third understanding. Once they give you their suggestions you should research those ideas and peek if they are truly a great fit for your business’ needs. Form an educated evaluation of the information. Refer to excellent IT industry sources to resolve the value of their suggestions for your business. I suggest having multiple companies give you quotes and suggestions. If you have completed steps one and two then you should trust them to give you righteous information and simply need to compare the choices.
4. Don’t be an ostrich!
Burying your head in the sand will not do life the device you want it to be. I was working with a client in rural Kansas that was less than two miles away from where a severe tornado had destroyed a number of local businesses and homes. They asked me to attend them acquire a anxiety recovery/business continuity idea for their business with regard to technology. I looked over their location and made my suggestions based on the threat level to them. I let them know that they needed to ensure they had a robust and acquire offsite storage strategy. Their data storage was in the basement and could be severely damaged in a weather event. Their tape system was ineffective and they stood to lose a week or two worth of data if the server was damaged. I showed them how worthy they stood to lose, gave examples of other businesses in their field that were similar in size and what they were doing, gave them tag ranges, etc. Now mind you I was not going to actually sell them anything. I was simply providing them with information. Their response to my assessment of the threat…….”That will never happen.”
What could I say to that? If you have ever responded in this manner to a tech that gave you a risk assessment, you should be very concerned factual about now. Friendly techs dispute to understand what the risks to your business are. We research these threats to accept out if they are credible. Denying an assessment, because you don’t like it could be setting your business up for catastrophe.
Imagine that your IT systems go down moral now and are down for the next two hours. How remarkable money would you stand to lose in down time? Is there a backup opinion in area to handle transactions? Can you function as a business? How about for 24 hours or 48 hours? Another conception, do you have Internet connections to your equipment? If some hacker got into your system and stole every fragment of data in it, how remarkable would you stand to lose? Do you store customer credit card information? Are there liabilities for not protecting that information? Proprietary ideas and plans for your business? Tarnished reputation and loss of clients?
All of these items are impartial the tip of the iceberg when talking about your IT liabilities. You have to win these potential losses into narrative when evaluating IT investments. Where does this investment fit into your strategic plans or business continuity? Is it going to provide better reliability or address some risk that your business faces? It is imperative that you consume a well informed examine at these items and accumulate attend from righteous experts in determining what your business risks are as well as your needs. We are not trying alarm tactics to trick folks into buying technology products. We are basing our findings on information from businesses that have gone through disasters in the past few years. The ones that are left have made it because they didn’t bury their head in the sand and wish catastrophe away.
5. Frugal vs. cheap.
I have lost count of the number of businesses that turned down an understanding that they knew should have been implemented simply because it looked “expensive”. Nothing worth having in life is free. Reflect of the investment in IT infrastructure and security as insurance. You have to insure your business assets, you have liability insurance, and you have many other insurance policies that you pay your hard earned dollars toward. If one of those insurance policies lapsed for a few hours, you would only feel it if the tornado ripped the building apart during that time.
Your IT infrastructure is like an insurance policy. It ensures the protection of your data, provides services for your business, supports services for your clients, and many other things that are the heartbeat of your business. It costs money to implement, contain, and protect this investment.
Compare apples to apples when it comes to cost. Once you have established the features that you are looking for, you should shop for the solutions that will provide those at the best tag. Ask for an ROI evaluation. Get out if this investment will keep you money in the long speed. What is the learning curve? Ask questions that will give you a lawful representation of the cost of implementation and the outlook on what your business could rep from the product or service.
Discuss your findings with your vendors. They should already have an conception of what options are out there and how they compare to their occupy. Accumulate feedback from all of them and go with the one that fits your needs the best. It may mean working with your accountant to strategize how to mask these costs. It may mean setting some financial goals or restructuring. The bottom line is that paying to contain your technology needs is unprejudiced as famous as paying your electric bill. You have to sustain the technology infrastructure up and functioning securely in order to do business.
There are many articles and resources out there to befriend you understand how to manage your IT infrastructure costs. Here are two links to sites that offer up discussions from CIO’s regarding managing IT costs effectively. These are blog sites and should not be held as the “gospel truth” on the subject. Facts should be verified, but the ideas are plenty and there are some obliging insights.
http://www.smartenterprisemag.com/articles/2007winter/ciosspeakout.jhtml
http://www.cio-weblog.com/50226711/managing_it_costs.php
6. Train
Not every business has an IT guy and many outsource. Businesses should ensure that the person in charge of technology abet some sort of technology training annually. At minimum go online and join a professional discussion group to glean out what technology trends are out there for your type of business. Contact vendors and catch out what training is available from them. Network with participants and fetch out what issues they are dealing with. Procure out who helps them with their strategies and what concerns they have for the future. Learn from the experiences of your peers.
The bottom line here is that you have to buy ownership of all aspects of your business. Technology is no longer an optional fraction of doing business. If you want to compete, you better sustain your technology plans properly accounted for in your overall business plans. Yell yourself on what is out there for your business, what responsibilities you have, and what regulations affect you. Relying on vendors is glorious, but you should be aware of what they are doing. Your name is on the door, not theirs. Be familiar with what they are responsible for and know how to track that they are fulfilling their responsibilities.
Too many times I behold little businesses trusting wholly in a vendor for their technology needs and get out the business is not getting the services it is paying for. Deny yourself to a level that you can at least know how to properly monitor your vendors to ensure they are providing the best possible succor for your business. If this is not an option, hire a consultant to arrive in and audit the operations to ensure things are being done correctly.
7. Have written plans
Your business must have a solid strategic concept and wretchedness recovery/business continuity understanding. Of companies that had a major loss of business data, 43% never reopen, 51% conclude within two years, and only 6% will survive long-term.1 This is objective one of many expert statistics on worry recovery and the risk any business takes when refusing to belief for a distress. Data loss can occur in a multitude of ways and should be carefully considered.
Without a written strategic concept, a written trouble recovery/business continuity concept, and a written risk assessment you are putting your business in jeopardy. To thrive, a business needs written goals to guide it. It sets standards to consider how well the business is doing, and sets up the parameters in which to apply technology. I cannot effectively convey a client that has no plan of where they are headed.
Creating a risk assessment will serve to identify liabilities the business faces. Work with other businesses in your dwelling, your insurance agency, hire a consultant, unprejudiced do whatever it takes to ensure you are meeting the needs of your business and mitigating risks to its success. Once created, the risk assessment will identify the areas that your wretchedness recovery/business continuity belief should address. Once the concern recovery view is in set, practice the notion to ensure that your people know what to do. Placing adequate attention on these areas will be the inequity between thriving in adverse conditions and closing the doors. This process takes time to do accurate. It is principal, so dedicate the anxiety needed.
Include mission indispensable components in these plans. If your electricity goes out, what will you do? If your IT vendor goes out of business, what will you do? What happens if your credit card processing machine goes out? You may know, but do your employees? Space the goals for the company and identify risks that might interfere with reaching them. Then spot out plans to mitigate these risks. Communicate these with your employees to ensure that everyone understands their role in the success of your business. After all, your success is their job security. In today’s financial climate it will go a long draw to wait on ease the minds of your employees to know that you have given serious opinion to the prolonged success of your business. Obviously these plans are not slight to your technology needs and risks. They will succor focus in on other issues that need attention as well.
We archaic to say in the military that we should hope for the best and concept for the worst. It worked there. We were confident that our crew was prepared to handle the obstacles in front of them. Developing and implementing these plans will wait on your business to provide its services to your clients through a difficulty.
All of these suggestions are provided to befriend you in both searching for and monitoring your unique IT vendors. Following these steps will back you evaluate your novel technology vendors as well as potential original vendors. These steps were born out of my experiences dealing with multiple businesses across the country. They will benefit you to navigate the large array of technology vendors and solutions they provide to derive the ones that work best for your business.
1. Hoffer, Jim. “Backing Up Business – Industry Trend or Event.” Health Management Technology, Jan 2001 [1]
In today’s world many petite businesses struggle to support up with technologies to back their business needs. You can’t turn on the TV without seeing an ad from some company telling you how they can give you all the advice you need. Maybe you need a geek from the local technology orderly market to advance in the gloomy and white car to fix everything. There is no shortage of vendors out there who claim to have everything you need. The pains is in radiant which one of them to fill.
I have been consulting in the technology field for ten years now. I have seen all forms of both astronomical and not-so-great vendors. This is truly a mine field for any shrimp business looking for wait on making technical decisions. I will attempt to aid the non-technical business owner communicate with those of us indoctrinated in geek train.
The following 7 items will benefit when evaluating technology vendors.
1. Trust your instincts.
First and foremost, you have to understand that you don’t need to be a technically trained person to know what bull excrement smells like. If you are working with a vendor that consistently makes you feel like you are getting ripped off, you probably are.
Owning a business usually means that you have to be proficient dealing with people. To be successful you have to be really satisfactory at reading people. This applies to your relationships with vendors. A worthy technology vendor will go out of their blueprint to not only meet your needs, but to do it in a diagram that helps you understand what they are doing and why it is essential.
2. Do your research.
What makes them the expert? Before you ask someone to advance in and evaluate your technology needs, you should always glance into their qualifications. I suggest that all businesses ask for references from perspective vendors. If you are a specialized business you should ask for similar references to your company. If you are a cramped bank, for example, the company should be familiar with the highly specialized needs of the banking industry, regulatory issues, and know what type of systems will fit your sized institution. Check with the Better Business Bureau for any claims against them as well. (www.bbb.org)
One thing to be cautious of is looking for the letters unhurried names as proof of their success. Not all spacious techs have MCSE, CCNA, A+, BS, MBA, etc unhurried their names. These can be edifying indicators that a person has spent a immense deal of time in class and taking tests. You should study for experience in the loyal world as well. What have they done in the industry? In most cases I would capture the advice of a successful tech with ten years experience and the respect of their peers over the concept of a modern graduate from any university. Life teaches us in ways that books cannot. I am in no method trying to diminish the importance of obtaining an education. It is simply to raise awareness to the fact that there are people out there that pride themselves on getting certifications. They have exiguous to no experience in applying that knowledge and simply go out and consume tests. Fabricate clear you check for their honest experience and weigh their advice accordingly.
Ensure the vendor has a confidentiality agreement in location with you prior to working with them on any level. Your clients inquire of you to protect their private information from outside sources. You have a responsibility to ensure that whoever you have working on your network will be able to do this effectively for you as well.
3. Know your limitations.
If you went to the hospital with a broken arm, would you sit and argue with the doctor about the best method to residence it? (Doctors are not allowed to reply that!) You have requested this vendor approach in and give you information. Don’t go out and read a “Dummies” book on fixing computers and then argue with everything the representative says.
Clients expect that I approach out and evaluate their needs based on my view of the IT field. I can’t remark you how many times someone with cramped to no training has argued with me over industry standard IT security principles and whether they are primary. Many times it is to shroud a feeling of inadequacy because they are responsible for the network and feel threatened by the fact that I am pointing out deficiencies. The bottom line is you should know your limitations. Don’t rob things personally. Score out of the arrangement and let the expert attend you.
However, do not consume their word at face value! I am all for shopping around and getting a second or third conception. Once they give you their suggestions you should research those ideas and glance if they are truly a pleasurable fit for your business’ needs. Build an educated evaluation of the information. Refer to proper IT industry sources to choose the value of their suggestions for your business. I suggest having multiple companies give you quotes and suggestions. If you have completed steps one and two then you should trust them to give you suitable information and simply need to compare the choices.
4. Don’t be an ostrich!
Burying your head in the sand will not produce life the blueprint you want it to be. I was working with a client in rural Kansas that was less than two miles away from where a severe tornado had destroyed a number of local businesses and homes. They asked me to back them gain a distress recovery/business continuity notion for their business with regard to technology. I looked over their region and made my suggestions based on the threat level to them. I let them know that they needed to ensure they had a robust and procure offsite storage strategy. Their data storage was in the basement and could be severely damaged in a weather event. Their tape system was ineffective and they stood to lose a week or two worth of data if the server was damaged. I showed them how mighty they stood to lose, gave examples of other businesses in their field that were similar in size and what they were doing, gave them trace ranges, etc. Now mind you I was not going to actually sell them anything. I was simply providing them with information. Their response to my assessment of the threat…….”That will never happen.”
What could I say to that? If you have ever responded in this manner to a tech that gave you a risk assessment, you should be very concerned just about now. Suited techs screech to understand what the risks to your business are. We research these threats to obtain out if they are credible. Denying an assessment, because you don’t like it could be setting your business up for catastrophe.
Imagine that your IT systems go down fair now and are down for the next two hours. How powerful money would you stand to lose in down time? Is there a backup concept in situation to handle transactions? Can you function as a business? How about for 24 hours or 48 hours? Another understanding, do you have Internet connections to your equipment? If some hacker got into your system and stole every share of data in it, how powerful would you stand to lose? Do you store customer credit card information? Are there liabilities for not protecting that information? Proprietary ideas and plans for your business? Tarnished reputation and loss of clients?
All of these items are objective the tip of the iceberg when talking about your IT liabilities. You have to lift these potential losses into sage when evaluating IT investments. Where does this investment fit into your strategic plans or business continuity? Is it going to provide better reliability or address some risk that your business faces? It is imperative that you occupy a well informed see at these items and salvage serve from obedient experts in determining what your business risks are as well as your needs. We are not trying awe tactics to trick folks into buying technology products. We are basing our findings on information from businesses that have gone through disasters in the past few years. The ones that are left have made it because they didn’t bury their head in the sand and wish catastrophe away.
5. Frugal vs. cheap.
I have lost count of the number of businesses that turned down an notion that they knew should have been implemented simply because it looked “expensive”. Nothing worth having in life is free. Deem of the investment in IT infrastructure and security as insurance. You have to insure your business assets, you have liability insurance, and you have many other insurance policies that you pay your hard earned dollars toward. If one of those insurance policies lapsed for a few hours, you would only feel it if the tornado ripped the building apart during that time.
Your IT infrastructure is like an insurance policy. It ensures the protection of your data, provides services for your business, supports services for your clients, and many other things that are the heartbeat of your business. It costs money to implement, occupy, and protect this investment.
Compare apples to apples when it comes to cost. Once you have established the features that you are looking for, you should shop for the solutions that will provide those at the best designate. Ask for an ROI evaluation. Procure out if this investment will put you money in the long hasten. What is the learning curve? Ask questions that will give you a right representation of the cost of implementation and the outlook on what your business could secure from the product or service.
Discuss your findings with your vendors. They should already have an thought of what options are out there and how they compare to their maintain. Catch feedback from all of them and go with the one that fits your needs the best. It may mean working with your accountant to strategize how to cloak these costs. It may mean setting some financial goals or restructuring. The bottom line is that paying to own your technology needs is impartial as necessary as paying your electric bill. You have to preserve the technology infrastructure up and functioning securely in order to do business.
There are many articles and resources out there to befriend you understand how to manage your IT infrastructure costs. Here are two links to sites that offer up discussions from CIO’s regarding managing IT costs effectively. These are blog sites and should not be held as the “gospel truth” on the subject. Facts should be verified, but the ideas are plenty and there are some helpful insights.
http://www.smartenterprisemag.com/articles/2007winter/ciosspeakout.jhtml
http://www.cio-weblog.com/50226711/managing_it_costs.php
6. Train
Not every business has an IT guy and many outsource. Businesses should ensure that the person in charge of technology abet some sort of technology training annually. At minimum go online and join a professional discussion group to secure out what technology trends are out there for your type of business. Contact vendors and catch out what training is available from them. Network with participants and fetch out what issues they are dealing with. Win out who helps them with their strategies and what concerns they have for the future. Learn from the experiences of your peers.
The bottom line here is that you have to catch ownership of all aspects of your business. Technology is no longer an optional fraction of doing business. If you want to compete, you better support your technology plans properly accounted for in your overall business plans. Drawl yourself on what is out there for your business, what responsibilities you have, and what regulations affect you. Relying on vendors is exquisite, but you should be aware of what they are doing. Your name is on the door, not theirs. Be familiar with what they are responsible for and know how to track that they are fulfilling their responsibilities.
Too many times I seek shrimp businesses trusting wholly in a vendor for their technology needs and salvage out the business is not getting the services it is paying for. Order yourself to a level that you can at least know how to properly monitor your vendors to ensure they are providing the best possible assist for your business. If this is not an option, hire a consultant to near in and audit the operations to ensure things are being done correctly.
7. Have written plans
Your business must have a solid strategic idea and pains recovery/business continuity thought. Of companies that had a major loss of business data, 43% never reopen, 51% stop within two years, and only 6% will survive long-term.1 This is unprejudiced one of many expert statistics on exertion recovery and the risk any business takes when refusing to concept for a pains. Data loss can occur in a multitude of ways and should be carefully considered.
Without a written strategic opinion, a written inconvenience recovery/business continuity concept, and a written risk assessment you are putting your business in jeopardy. To thrive, a business needs written goals to guide it. It sets standards to believe how well the business is doing, and sets up the parameters in which to apply technology. I cannot effectively state a client that has no thought of where they are headed.
Creating a risk assessment will assist to identify liabilities the business faces. Work with other businesses in your location, your insurance agency, hire a consultant, unbiased do whatever it takes to ensure you are meeting the needs of your business and mitigating risks to its success. Once created, the risk assessment will identify the areas that your pains recovery/business continuity concept should address. Once the concern recovery view is in spot, practice the notion to ensure that your people know what to do. Placing adequate attention on these areas will be the contrast between thriving in adverse conditions and closing the doors. This process takes time to do accurate. It is well-known, so dedicate the concern needed.
Include mission valuable components in these plans. If your electricity goes out, what will you do? If your IT vendor goes out of business, what will you do? What happens if your credit card processing machine goes out? You may know, but do your employees? Place the goals for the company and identify risks that might interfere with reaching them. Then place out plans to mitigate these risks. Communicate these with your employees to ensure that everyone understands their role in the success of your business. After all, your success is their job security. In today’s financial climate it will go a long diagram to abet ease the minds of your employees to know that you have given serious conception to the prolonged success of your business. Obviously these plans are not runt to your technology needs and risks. They will attend focus in on other issues that need attention as well.
We extinct to say in the military that we should hope for the best and view for the worst. It worked there. We were confident that our crew was prepared to handle the obstacles in front of them. Developing and implementing these plans will support your business to provide its services to your clients through a danger.
All of these suggestions are provided to benefit you in both searching for and monitoring your modern IT vendors. Following these steps will succor you evaluate your unusual technology vendors as well as potential modern vendors. These steps were born out of my experiences dealing with multiple businesses across the country. They will assist you to navigate the large array of technology vendors and solutions they provide to fetch the ones that work best for your business.
1. Hoffer, Jim. “Backing Up Business – Industry Trend or Event.” Health Management Technology, Jan 2001 [1]
