Small Business and Overcoming IT Challenges

Running a small business or even conceptualizing one is a challenging task. Once the business is up and running, sustaining it in today’s fast-paced evolving world of advanced technology is a whole other situation to handle on its own. Almost all business owners are only worried about making profits, breaking even and maintaining the cash flow when they start their business. Information technology is the last thing that crosses the minds of business owners for quite some time. However, once they get into the competition and are prey to quickly growing competitors. The role of information technology starts to make its way into the minds of business owners. So overcoming IT challenges can be vital to survival.

One of the biggest challenges that small business owners face is the lack of funds to invest in the latest technology prevailing in the market. Therefore, they aim for something similar but not the very latest to keep their business breathing. Even though they do not install the latest technology and equipment they are faced with multiple challenges on a daily basis. They must encounter in order to keep running ahead of their competitors. Here are a few technology related challenges that small business owners face:

Overcoming IT Challenges

Weak Firewalls –

Firewalls are the most vital tool in terms of keeping unwanted access seeking individuals out of your network. Keeping the firewalls strong and running does not come at a cheap cost. Small business owners will need to invest greatly in terms of keeping their confidential data secure. By ensuring that all systems have a strong firewall installed and functioning.

Outdated Operating Systems –

Keeping your operating systems updated and in line with the new technology upgrades will help prevent the risks associated with outdated systems. Network security attack can pose great risk to your systems and the confidential data that is stored in it.

Encryption of data –

A great part of advances in technology has been the ever increasing rate of hacking of data. This has the potential of cracking even the biggest business software houses and stealing their data. Small business owners may not have big data stored in their systems but all kinds of data that even small business owners have is significant in terms of saving their business.

Internet policies –

Advanced technology will provide greater access to the world of internet to all your employees. This may pose great threat to potential data hackers from all over the globe. It is important to have a strict internet policy in place so that information sharing remains restricted and your data is kept safe.

Staff Resistance –

Introduction to advanced technology can cause a lot of resistance from your staff mainly because of insecurity of losing their jobs due to automation. However, it is important for you to keep the staff motivated and remind them of the significance of the new and improved technology that is only there to ease their lives and improve their productivity.

Training Staff –

Once the staff resistance is dealt with the next big step is to teach and train your staff to use the system effectively. Investing in these training is not an easy task. It will require great efforts to ensure that every employee attending the training. Especially as you have invested in is actually fulfilling the purpose of him or her attending the training. Training are not always cheap these days. So ensuring that your staff is trained to use the new technology is highly imperative. Otherwise there would be no use of getting the information technology in place at all.

The best way to overcome these challenges would be to have an IT expert on board right from the beginning. For a small startup it is tough to have that added expense at that phase of your business. While it helps to ensure that all other processes and difficulties are dealt with smoothly. The expense can be a bit much for some small businesses. The IT expert will probably be able to provide cost-effective solutions to all your IT related problems because of the in-depth knowledge that the professional will have related to the field.

 

About Small Business Care:

At Small Business Care we continually work to find tools and solutions for small businesses. We are always looking to profile successful small businesses. The tools the use and general strategies on how to improve your business. On Tuesdays we usually have a post on technology tools for small businesses as part of our “Tech Tuesday”. On Friday’s we focus on financial issues that small business are likely to see for our “Finance Friday”. We have a range of experts in various fields to help make sure your small business avoids these major missteps.