In the 21st century, business is unthinkable without information technology. Let’s find out what are the rules of enterprise IT infrastructure development, how do representatives of small businesses use new tools and what is there to be afraid of in reality?
To implement or not to implement? For the note of the manager.
Accounting, marketing, enterprise management, and simple paperwork is already impossible without modern technology. How to strategically organize the interaction of digital infrastructure and business, so that technologies work for the development of the company and bring profit, rather than business working to provide IT-department? Technical managers who are fixated on technologies and are not guided by business needs, risk to remain without work.
The first thing to consider for this task is the need to maintain a balance between support and development. The Gartner report, released in late 2019, found that only 23% of executives trust their CIOs. The reason is that CIOs are focused on system support, not on the needs of clients and employees.
At the same time, the IT department is required to meet the basic needs of the office: to keep the park running, security and network functionality, as well as the work of auxiliary services such as mail, messengers, service management software, CRM and office applications. The IT strategy must represent a dynamic balance between “everything works” and “innovation needs to be introduced.
Third-party services are becoming more and more popular. As a result, part of the digital infrastructure may be beyond the IT department’s area of responsibility. Own servers, own local network, VPN tunnels for remote departments, own software and development department – all this is gradually shifted from the shoulders of IT staff to other companies that provide services in B2B format. As a result, when planning, it is worth keeping in mind that it is sometimes easier to subscribe to the service than to recruit and control a whole department of specialists who will develop and maintain a similar service exclusively for internal needs of employees.
And the main thing is to keep in mind the picture of life of the company as a whole and strive for the success of each department. It is necessary to understand what exactly will bring benefit and income to the company or optimize the work of employees. It is worth to know what problems are worrying customers, what in service, marketing or other industry requires attention and can be improved by automation.
Set of tools for small business
Small business is probably the most dynamic category of entrepreneurs. With low budgets and constantly changing conditions, small business executives have to keep their nose in the wind and run twice as fast to stay afloat especially in 2020 because of COVID-19. What are the main trends in small business automation in recent years?
First of all, it is trust in cloud services. The development of technologies and the strategy of the state have left doubts about the reliability of cloud storage in the past. For example, online cash desks are already transmitting information to the Federal Tax Service, and one can not worry that a third-party contractor will “salt” accounting to government agencies.
Another trend of recent years is the transition to the use of paid software. Previously, paying for services and programs was considered a luxury, buying a license wines was somehow strange, and server licensing was out of the question. Now many have accepted that it is easier to give a small amount for a license by business standards, than to risk the stability of the enterprise, using detours.
The trend of increasing technical literacy of managers and staff is also important now. Just 10 years ago, an accountant may not know how to turn on a computer or access the Internet. Now an employee without computer skills is not needed, and the manager is still at the stage of building a business plan to think about a strategy for promotion on the Internet, the introduction of CRM and other services.
Banks are also increasingly helping enterprises not only in financial operations, but also provide support when registering with the Federal Tax Service, creating websites, the introduction of accounting tools, the organization of accounting system employees, CRM. Often, it is the use of banking services is the first step to automating a company with an archaic way