Dealing with Technology Vendors as a Small Business
In today’s world many tiny businesses struggle to sustain up with technologies to help 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 desirable market to reach in the dismal 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 vivid which one of them to have.
I have been consulting in the technology field for ten years now. I have seen all forms of both big and not-so-great vendors. This is truly a mine field for any tiny business looking for relieve making technical decisions. I will attempt to relieve the non-technical business owner communicate with those of us indoctrinated in geek negate.
The following 7 items will relieve 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 worthy at reading people. This applies to your relationships with vendors. A obliging technology vendor will go out of their procedure to not only meet your needs, but to do it in a blueprint that helps you understand what they are doing and why it is significant.
2. Do your research.
What makes them the expert? Before you ask someone to approach in and evaluate your technology needs, you should always ogle 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 puny 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 late names as proof of their success. Not all grand techs have MCSE, CCNA, A+, BS, MBA, etc unhurried their names. These can be wonderful indicators that a person has spent a broad deal of time in class and taking tests. You should peek for experience in the steady world as well. What have they done in the industry? In most cases I would pick the advice of a successful tech with ten years experience and the respect of their peers over the idea of a novel graduate from any university. Life teaches us in ways that books cannot. I am in no procedure 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 dinky to no experience in applying that knowledge and simply go out and catch tests. Fabricate positive you check for their fair experience and weigh their advice accordingly.
Ensure the vendor has a confidentiality agreement in dwelling with you prior to working with them on any level. Your clients seek information from 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 map to position it? (Doctors are not allowed to retort 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 query that I reach out and evaluate their needs based on my plan of the IT field. I can’t yelp you how many times someone with itsy-bitsy to no training has argued with me over industry standard IT security principles and whether they are famous. 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. Derive out of the design and let the expert benefit you.
However, do not capture their word at face value! I am all for shopping around and getting a second or third notion. Once they give you their suggestions you should research those ideas and ogle if they are truly a splendid fit for your business’ needs. Earn an educated evaluation of the information. Refer to great IT industry sources to settle 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 marvelous information and simply need to compare the choices.
4. Don’t be an ostrich!
Burying your head in the sand will not build life the design 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 wait on them get a exertion recovery/business continuity conception for their business with regard to technology. I looked over their set 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 collect 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 noteworthy they stood to lose, gave examples of other businesses in their field that were similar in size and what they were doing, gave them impress 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 proper about now. Superb techs thunder to understand what the risks to your business are. We research these threats to gather 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 true now and are down for the next two hours. How great money would you stand to lose in down time? Is there a backup understanding in dwelling to handle transactions? Can you function as a business? How about for 24 hours or 48 hours? Another concept, do you have Internet connections to your equipment? If some hacker got into your system and stole every share of data in it, how worthy 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 honest the tip of the iceberg when talking about your IT liabilities. You have to prefer these potential losses into record 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 bewitch a well informed peer at these items and secure encourage from valid 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 belief 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, have, 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 sign. Ask for an ROI evaluation. Get out if this investment will establish you money in the long accelerate. What is the learning curve? Ask questions that will give you a proper representation of the cost of implementation and the outlook on what your business could regain from the product or service.
Discuss your findings with your vendors. They should already have an concept of what options are out there and how they compare to their have. Gather 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 camouflage these costs. It may mean setting some financial goals or restructuring. The bottom line is that paying to occupy your technology needs is fair as well-known as paying your electric bill. You have to withhold the technology infrastructure up and functioning securely in order to do business.
There are many articles and resources out there to aid 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 salubrious 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 serve some sort of technology training annually. At minimum go online and join a professional discussion group to gain out what technology trends are out there for your type of business. Contact vendors and acquire out what training is available from them. Network with participants and gain out what issues they are dealing with. Bag 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 engage ownership of all aspects of your business. Technology is no longer an optional portion of doing business. If you want to compete, you better retain your technology plans properly accounted for in your overall business plans. Whine yourself on what is out there for your business, what responsibilities you have, and what regulations affect you. Relying on vendors is dazzling, 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 look exiguous businesses trusting wholly in a vendor for their technology needs and pick up out the business is not getting the services it is paying for. Swear yourself to a level that you can at least know how to properly monitor your vendors to ensure they are providing the best possible encourage for your business. If this is not an option, hire a consultant to reach in and audit the operations to ensure things are being done correctly.
7. Have written plans
Your business must have a solid strategic thought and trouble recovery/business continuity understanding. Of companies that had a major loss of business data, 43% never reopen, 51% end within two years, and only 6% will survive long-term.1 This is honest one of many expert statistics on effort recovery and the risk any business takes when refusing to belief for a trouble. Data loss can occur in a multitude of ways and should be carefully considered.
Without a written strategic idea, a written pain recovery/business continuity thought, 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 contemplate how well the business is doing, and sets up the parameters in which to apply technology. I cannot effectively scream a client that has no opinion of where they are headed.
Creating a risk assessment will befriend to identify liabilities the business faces. Work with other businesses in your status, 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 effort recovery/business continuity understanding should address. Once the pain recovery understanding is in station, practice the conception 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 proper. It is valuable, so dedicate the anguish needed.
Include mission important 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? Region the goals for the company and identify risks that might interfere with reaching them. Then state 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 idea to the prolonged success of your business. Obviously these plans are not itsy-bitsy to your technology needs and risks. They will serve 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 abet your business to provide its services to your clients through a trouble.
All of these suggestions are provided to attend you in both searching for and monitoring your unusual IT vendors. Following these steps will relieve 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 back you to navigate the large array of technology vendors and solutions they provide to glean 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 tiny businesses struggle to sustain up with technologies to attend 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 elegant market to reach in the sunless and white car to fix everything. There is no shortage of vendors out there who claim to have everything you need. The difficulty is in sparkling which one of them to gain.
I have been consulting in the technology field for ten years now. I have seen all forms of both tremendous and not-so-great vendors. This is truly a mine field for any dinky business looking for support making technical decisions. I will attempt to benefit the non-technical business owner communicate with those of us indoctrinated in geek bid.
The following 7 items will support 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 valid at reading people. This applies to your relationships with vendors. A gracious technology vendor will go out of their procedure 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 considerable.
2. Do your research.
What makes them the expert? Before you ask someone to arrive in and evaluate your technology needs, you should always contemplate 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 dinky 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 slow names as proof of their success. Not all vast techs have MCSE, CCNA, A+, BS, MBA, etc unhurried their names. These can be splendid indicators that a person has spent a tall deal of time in class and taking tests. You should observe for experience in the staunch world as well. What have they done in the industry? In most cases I would pick the advice of a successful tech with ten years experience and the respect of their peers over the notion of a modern graduate from any university. Life teaches us in ways that books cannot. I am in no draw 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 runt to no experience in applying that knowledge and simply go out and win tests. Compose distinct you check for their just experience and weigh their advice accordingly.
Ensure the vendor has a confidentiality agreement in residence 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 map to area it? (Doctors are not allowed to acknowledge 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 interrogate that I approach out and evaluate their needs based on my belief of the IT field. I can’t boom you how many times someone with diminutive to no training has argued with me over industry standard IT security principles and whether they are well-known. Many times it is to mask 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 seize things personally. Regain out of the scheme and let the expert succor you.
However, do not grasp their word at face value! I am all for shopping around and getting a second or third view. Once they give you their suggestions you should research those ideas and notice if they are truly a wonderful fit for your business’ needs. Invent an educated evaluation of the information. Refer to expedient IT industry sources to decide 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 edifying information and simply need to compare the choices.
4. Don’t be an ostrich!
Burying your head in the sand will not construct life the draw 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 wait on them acquire a exertion recovery/business continuity understanding for their business with regard to technology. I looked over their spot 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 gather 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 powerful 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 suitable about now. Ample techs stutter to understand what the risks to your business are. We research these threats to collect 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 great money would you stand to lose in down time? Is there a backup concept in status to handle transactions? Can you function as a business? How about for 24 hours or 48 hours? Another opinion, do you have Internet connections to your equipment? If some hacker got into your system and stole every fragment of data in it, how mighty 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 unbiased the tip of the iceberg when talking about your IT liabilities. You have to hold these potential losses into anecdote 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 lift a well informed leer at these items and accept wait on from expedient experts in determining what your business risks are as well as your needs. We are not trying fear 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. Believe 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, acquire, 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 impress. Ask for an ROI evaluation. Win out if this investment will effect you money in the long urge. What is the learning curve? Ask questions that will give you a factual representation of the cost of implementation and the outlook on what your business could score from the product or service.
Discuss your findings with your vendors. They should already have an understanding of what options are out there and how they compare to their possess. Rep 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 conceal these costs. It may mean setting some financial goals or restructuring. The bottom line is that paying to contain your technology needs is impartial as well-known 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 succor 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 noble 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 benefit some sort of technology training annually. At minimum go online and join a professional discussion group to rep out what technology trends are out there for your type of business. Contact vendors and acquire out what training is available from them. Network with participants and pick up out what issues they are dealing with. Acquire 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 consume ownership of all aspects of your business. Technology is no longer an optional fragment of doing business. If you want to compete, you better sustain your technology plans properly accounted for in your overall business plans. Speak yourself on what is out there for your business, what responsibilities you have, and what regulations affect you. Relying on vendors is aesthetic, 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 view exiguous businesses trusting wholly in a vendor for their technology needs and acquire out the business is not getting the services it is paying for. Convey yourself to a level that you can at least know how to properly monitor your vendors to ensure they are providing the best possible befriend for your business. If this is not an option, hire a consultant to reach 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 thought. Of companies that had a major loss of business data, 43% never reopen, 51% end within two years, and only 6% will survive long-term.1 This is objective one of many expert statistics on inconvenience recovery and the risk any business takes when refusing to thought for a danger. Data loss can occur in a multitude of ways and should be carefully considered.
Without a written strategic understanding, a written worry recovery/business continuity idea, 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 assume how well the business is doing, and sets up the parameters in which to apply technology. I cannot effectively grunt a client that has no conception of where they are headed.
Creating a risk assessment will relieve to identify liabilities the business faces. Work with other businesses in your region, your insurance agency, hire a consultant, fair 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 danger recovery/business continuity conception should address. Once the wretchedness recovery notion is in set, practice the idea to ensure that your people know what to do. Placing adequate attention on these areas will be the disagreement between thriving in adverse conditions and closing the doors. This process takes time to do just. It is considerable, so dedicate the anguish needed.
Include mission famous 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? Situation the goals for the company and identify risks that might interfere with reaching them. Then situation 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 map to encourage ease the minds of your employees to know that you have given serious view to the prolonged success of your business. Obviously these plans are not petite to your technology needs and risks. They will support focus in on other issues that need attention as well.
We feeble to say in the military that we should hope for the best and conception 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 aid your business to provide its services to your clients through a exertion.
All of these suggestions are provided to aid you in both searching for and monitoring your modern IT vendors. Following these steps will aid you evaluate your recent technology vendors as well as potential unique vendors. These steps were born out of my experiences dealing with multiple businesses across the country. They will support you to navigate the spacious array of technology vendors and solutions they provide to win the ones that work best for your business.
1. Hoffer, Jim. “Backing Up Business – Industry Trend or Event.” Health Management Technology, Jan 2001 [1]
