Businesses are more dependent on IT than ever before. There is almost no aspect of a modern business that isn’t IT reliant for effective operation. Despite this, we would be willing to bet that IT would be a ‘top 5’ answer to the question ‘what goes wrong in your business?’ for most organisations.

Here are some of the problems SMEs frequently encounter with IT and some thoughts on how to get round them:

1. The basic systems are just not robust and reliable enough. Usually because no one identified the key business needs and built the original system around these.

2. IT infrastructure has been left behind by business growth. ‘IT scalability’ has not been factored in to either the IT plan or the business plan leading to IT stress and capex spikes.

3. Security has not been built into the system. Very few SMEs know that 33% of SMEs suffer outside cyber attacks every year. Most systems just aren’t secure enough leaving businesses vulnerable and data and reputation at risk.

4. Business recovery strategies not in place or inadequate. Many businesses don’t understand their vulnerability to loss of service due to IT failures or their compliance obligations in this area.

5. IT costs spiraling out of control. The cost of IT is increasing with its importance, but poor planning and error strewn implementation can add massively to these costs.

In our experience organisations do not step back and take a strategic, long-term approach to IT, and once they start developing on an ad hoc basis they are building in IT issues to the future of the company. However, even those companies that do think long-term can be frustrated if their IT strategy develops separately to their business strategy. They may have a great business strategy and a great IT strategy but they don’t match!

Our solution is to work with IT consultants who have a business understanding, who can interpret your business needs and contribute strategically at that level before work on the actual IT solution begins.

Ultimately IT exists to make doing business easier. Sadly that isn’t everyone’s experience.

*Original content taken from guest blog: www.valuemakeruk.com/5-common-mistakes-companies-make-with-their-it