Four Ways to Find Out If You Have Too Much Technology or Not

In the world of today, being interconnected is not an option –and neither is the use of office technology. However, a certain question arises from this statement: what is too much technology use, and how do you know if you are using too little or too much?

The more you seek to answer these questions, the more likely you are to succeed. In fact, they are highly important because of the increasing rates of sophistication in technology (even the ones used in your workplace), and along with that comes the rise of employee expectations. In addition, you also need to consider all major issues in office systems, regardless of whether they are small or large. These include privacy and security issues (leading to the increase in lists of the10 best VPN services), as well as frequency in upgrades of operating systems and networks.

In case you are not certain of the amounts of tech you use, here are some criteria you can examine and ensure your workplace satisfies your requirements now and in the future.

Creating a plan and mapping important milestones

Numerous small and medium businesses as well as startups will tend to celebrate the business plan details, but will forget to include the plan for technology inclusion and monitoring within it. However, all successful businesses will always have a good plan for their technology use and inclusion.

If unsure of the periods to best evaluate your tech plan, consider doing it when you hit various milestones in your business. For instance, you cannot expect to operate using the same methods when you increase your employees from two to ten, or even to 50. You cannot also expect to use the same methods when your business revenues increase to thousands of dollars every month – you will need to incorporate new tech and upgrade the ones that are already in existence.

Tech normally utilizes tracks very closely with the revenue generation and headcounts. Therefore, both of these criteria are a natural starting point for projecting any technological needs you might want to consider in the future.

Seeing all the strategic values of something

In general circumstances, a startup and a small or medium sized business will maintain its focus on the cash flows, customer growth and investors. This unfortunately comes at the expense of increasing office tech, understandably so because the business is still in the stage of trying to survive against the competition. They will therefore treat technology incorporation as an expense or an afterthought.

However, in the hiring environment of today with the stiff levels of competition, that thinking will not cut it at all. For instance, a recent PwC study revealed more than 50 percent of millennials state that one of the most important factors in helping them decide where they want to work is whether the business has adequate technology. In their own personal lives, they are already accustomed to spending money on tech gadgets such as tablets, laptops, smartphones, and so on – so they do not expect their potential employers to be slacking off on the same.

If you want to attract the best employees today for your company, investment in the best technology for the business is an investment you cannot ignore. It is not just functional, it is used as a measure of how serious your brand is, and whether it is looking towards the future.

Consider benchmarking against your physical space

The greatest expense any business will have is not necessarily the electricity costs or anything else associated with daily expenses – it is usually the real estate, or rent. Therefore, one of the defining factors of technology use in your enterprise, both for now and the future, is the space you occupy, and how various people use or interact with it.

Today, real estate also happens to be more fluid than before because it is changing frequently. For instance, starting off with an open office floor plan, then changes to hoteling, to telecommuting, and so on.

Therefore, it is very important to make an accurate and thorough inventory of all the needs of your real estate. For instance, consider if your floor plan includes a close plan, where each office your employees operate in have doors. On the other hand, do you have unassigned stations, thanks to an open office plan? Do you have any telecommuting employees, and how many of them are they?

These and other questions will help you to know your footprint better, and deliver the right technological tools they need. It is a tough call trying to balance real estate with IT, but when you crack this code, it will pay you dividends in the future.

Set rules and stick to them

You will be hard pressed to find any individual who is not a tech expert these days, especially when it comes to subjects they enjoy. You will also find an employee in all companies who cannot live without access to their smart gadgets and laptops, and they always expect the network of the company to configure around their devices. There is a distinction between dysfunction and flexibility though.

Every big company always has IT standards, and without them it becomes impossible to manage. If you have a small company and are delaying your implementation process of standards, then you run the risk of getting to the ‘Franken-tech’ state, where your business cannot function adequately.

For example, you buy second hand monitors at Best Buy or some machines that are on a local sale, but you are not sure of the quality – and it can easily compromise the quality of your performance. Instead of buying yet you lack the capital to get high tech equipment for your office, leasing is a better option and gives you great performance without straining your resources.

Final thoughts

The inclusion of high end technology in your business operations is a must in the working environment to guarantee great performance. However, you need to consider the impact it has on your business as well, and these factors will help you evaluate different technological options to help you make the best choice.