Running a business isn’t cheap. Nobody can blame you for wanting to save a few bucks wherever you can. That said, one place you should not pinch pennies is your business technology, particularly when it comes to updates. While that old computer may still look like it’s perfectly fine, technology being broken is measured on a spectrum. Yours could easily be holding your business back and costing you potential income.
Let’s estimate just how high these costs could be, and how to resolve them moving forward.
Your Expectations Could Defy Moore’s Law
Back in 1965, Gordon Moore—one of the co-founders of a little company called Intel—predicted the capabilities of computers yet to come. He surmised that computing power would effectively double every two years or so. This concept came to be known as Moore’s Law, and has proven to be pretty accurate.
Moore’s Law is the reason why the computers we use today are both smaller and hugely more powerful than the ones that came before. It’s also why all those workstations you invested in are already outdated, just a few years later.
Of course, running a business properly requires you to be frugal to some degree… and as a result, it can seem utterly wasteful to so quickly cycle through your technology. The idea of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” does seem to hold water—and in terms of some office materials, like your desks or chairs, it makes sense. In these cases, it can help you save money.
Where your technology is concerned, however, it becomes a very different story.
Your Technology Can Be Broken in Sneaky (and Expensive) Ways
While maybe not “broken” in the traditional sense, your technology can quietly accumulate issues that lead to wasted time and wasted money. That said, with the end of the year swiftly approaching, now seems to be the logical time to reconsider your strategy and see how to optimize your spending more effectively.
How Old Technology’s Costs Build Up
Let’s say that a business hasn’t updated its technology in a few years, including the workstations that its team relies on to do their jobs. If it takes multiple minutes to do anything, that’s going to be hours wasted over the days, weeks, and months that the problem persists. Five minutes loading a file here, six minutes of buffering here, it all adds up.
Let’s examine just how much it does:
Calculating the Cost of Your Old Tech
Let’s assume that all the recurring issues our sample business deals with cost an employee 15 minutes of their day. This means that, assuming a five-day workweek, an hour and 15 minutes are being wasted per week. This 75 minutes translates to 62.5 hours a year… effectively a week and a half of productive time sacrificed, a week and a half you’re still paying for in salary and benefits.
Multiply that by the number of employees you have dealing with these issues, and your wallet should hurt by this point. At the very least, the cost of obtaining new hardware will seem much more reasonable by comparison.
Believe It or Not, Cost is Just One of Your Worries, Too
Outdated and aging technology also has other drawbacks to consider. For starters, the older that hardware gets, the less and less likely it is that it will support crucial security updates to its software and operating systems alike. Exacerbating this, many modern cybersecurity safeguards rely on specific hardware components that simply aren’t included in older machines.
One also has to consider the direct impact that flaky tech will have on your employees. Most of the people you hire will want to be productive. However, if the tools they have to use simply don’t work the way they need them to, your team members are—sooner or later—going to burn out. By providing your team with the necessary resources to perform their jobs successfully, you demonstrate that you value what they bring to the table.
How to Eliminate Misplaced or Missing Tech Spending
A process known as a refresh cycle—a planned approach to strategically scheduling when your tech is to be replaced—is the best way to address these needs. A well-designed refresh cycle offers a few key benefits to your business, including:
- Predictable budgeting, preventing sudden costs, and allowing you to treat hardware acquisition as an operating expense.
- Boosted productivity thanks to tools that are designed to work efficiently and meet their needs.
- Hardened security via compatibility with new protections, removing a lot of your risk.
- Employee retention is supported by a more positive workplace culture and experience.
Work With Us and Enjoy More Benefits for Your Investment
Historically, hardware has garnered a reputation for being very expensive. Today, it is critical to view these expenses as more of an investment than a cost of doing business. Of course, this is much easier said than done… unless you have a skilled technology resource in your corner to ensure your hardware procurement is optimized for success.
We can be that resource for you. We’ll help advise your business and carry out the plans we make to provide a competitive advantage. Reach out to us at PHONENUMBER to learn more about what we can help you accomplish!