Nowadays, most businesses rely on some form of technology to maintain their operations. For the majority, IT or Information Technology is commonplace. Walk into any office, and you’ll usually see an array of computers, laptops, tablets, photocopiers, and so forth. Most business leaders assume the technology they buy will last for several years without needing replacement.
The trouble is; the technology industry evolves at quite a rapid pace! Something that is current or on-trend today might be old and out of date tomorrow! Sure, most companies can’t afford to upgrade their office technology every few months or even every year. However, not upgrading equipment at all can cause potentially catastrophic consequences to a business! Here’s why:
Productivity can slow to a crawl
When you run a business, time is of the essence. It’s crucial that daily tasks get completed in a timely fashion without any significant delays. If your office is rocking ten-year-old computers running Windows XP, your staff will probably spend most of their day waiting for things to load on them!
Most firms rely on computers to run a variety of software applications to facilitate their daily operations. They can range from accounting apps through to order processing systems. If your users have to wait around for things to happen, they are wasting a lot of time each. Remember, that time they lose is what you are paying for! Instead, they could be productive with a modern system and not have a backlog of work to complete.
Your customers will feel frustrated
Imagine how annoyed your staff becomes when it takes them a long time to complete a task that should only take a few seconds. Now consider how your customers may feel if they too must wait for your staff to assist them.
Poor customer service can be damaging to a company’s reputation, especially in a saturated market. The last thing you want is for your customers to go elsewhere because it takes you so long to do anything!
Old office technology is a technical support nightmare
As you know, anything electronic will need maintenance and repairs at some point. If some of your systems aren’t functioning correctly, you will no doubt contact an IT support firm to help you out. For old systems, you may find that spare parts could be challenging (and expensive) to source. From a cost point of view, newer systems are cheaper and easier to maintain.
Plus, it’s likely that modern software applications and even hardware may not work correctly on your old office technology.
Your data could be at risk of being compromised
As a business leader, one of your responsibilities is to ensure the safety and security of the information you hold on your customers. The sad fact is that a significant number of firms leave themselves vulnerable to hacking and malware attacks over the Internet.
If they are running old operating systems, they will seldom have updates to protect against the latest security threats. Of course, to install a new OS means you’ll need a more efficient (i.e. newer) computer as the old one will have too slow a spec for it!
If you have old technology, it’s time to think about upgrading it all or you could face a lot of technical headaches soon!
