smallbusiness.co.uk: Helping your business think big

You don't have to break the bank with technology investments. And a targeted IT spend could pay dividends for your business.

John Ingram, chief operations officer at comparison websites company Consumerchoices.co.uk, believes investing in the right equipment is crucial to staying on top of his game. ‘Five years ago comparison sites were just about the price, now users want a much fuller experience. If we don’t invest and do things ahead of the curve then a business like ours will just die.’

Over the last year Ingram says the company has spent money improving its hosting systems. ‘Our network and systems have been set up to give us a lot of flexibility in the next 18-24 months in terms of our traffic growth projections. We’ve spent an additional £50,000 upgrading our technology over the last year, the main benefit is that this gives us some breathing space, so we don’t have to continually think about tweaking things.’

David Breith, CEO of O-bit Telecom, says the company has made its operations smoother and saved money in labour costs by investing in an enterprise resource planning programme: ‘We started developing the technology five years ago. Everything is integrated now so we can measure our customer relationships. We know exactly what calls are coming in and what are going out and can see how often an account manager is contacting clients.’

Reducing IT spend

Opting for new IT models can also save you money, says Ben Silcox, managing director at Nuyuu Fitness. Silcox has kept his capital expenditure costs to a minimum while also investing in smartphones so employees can access files remotely. Email and document storage are accessed through the cloud, which allows staff to use the software as a service online.

‘We are a young company and we wanted to keep all our costs down, using the cloud therefore seemed like a logical thing to do. We like the fact that it’s scalable and since starting the company we’ve tripled our staff to 65. In the process we didn’t need to find more office space for servers or get anyone in to route more cables,’ he says.

Kerry Bentley, SMB marketing manager at Microsoft, believes many small businesses have yet to fully utilise technology in order to give them a competitive advantage. ‘The world we live and work in has changed incredibly in recent years. A few years ago many people would not have thought it possible to get email on the go, yet with the rise of smartphones this has become mainstream. Five years ago people would not have considered social networking technologies, yet a growing number of businesses include this in their marketing mix as a key way to reach a younger demographic,’ she adds.

But new technology doesn’t have to mean a complete overhaul of existing systems. For Peter Gradwell, managing director of an eponymous internet service provider, a mixture of cloud-based applications and desk-top software offers the best solution. ‘I can understand the argument that people want to own their own assets, but to be honest I think that’s becoming outdated now.

‘We still use a few software packages and some of the most difficult things to move into the cloud, such as drawing tools, software design and video editing equipment. Basically, all the power hungry things that are hard to virtualise. Our sales information, customer billing, telephony and data storage are all operated in the cloud, which means staff can work from anywhere.’

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