Do You Have an IT Professional Aiding Your Technology Choices?

Who's in charge of making the decisions in your business concerning technology? Ideally, you want an internal IT manager or a CIO with IT experience calling the tech shots. However, many businesses don't have this luxury. According to a CompTIA survey from last November, 48 percent of businesses have managers making decisions about technology implementation that don't have IT experience.

This CompTIA study entitled Third Annual Trends in Managed Services surveyed 400 IT and business professionals. In this study, it was found that 27 percent of firms have non-IT executives, such as CFOs and procurement officers calling the technology shots. Making up the other half of the technology-deciders equation are committees of non-IT executives. Considering how important of a role technology plays in the growth of any modern business, it's shocking to see so many decisions about its implementation being made by professionals whose expertise lies in other realms of business.

Every organization that doesn't have IT professionals making decisions about technology has their own reasons for setting up the chain of command like this. Here are just two common reasons why a company may have a non-IT executive making IT decisions.

IT is Seen as Only as a Maintenance Concern
There are those in the business world that view IT as a maintenance burden. They may only see technology as a series of large expenses associated with keeping their IT infrastructure going, and perhaps they're overly occupied with the maintenance price tag to investigate what the ROI is for their tech. A business leader with a background in budgeting may even view IT as a controllable expense that can always be trimmed. Instead, we believe technology to be so much more. Successful businesses view technology as a powerful tool that's worth investing in because of its potential to spur growth.

A Business Thinks It's Too Small to Afford a Professional IT Manager
A small and growing business may resist adding a professional IT member to their executive team because they have other positions to fill that they deem to be more pressing. For example, if there's a business specializing in making widgets and the widget market is red-hot with fierce competition, a growing business may be more tempted to hire another widget specialist to gain the competitive advantage rather than onboarding an IT professional. In a competitive business market such as this, adding a member to the team that's familiar with the latest business technology relating to the widget vertical will be the surest way to gain an advantage over the competition.

Technology is too important of a business tool to not give it professional consideration. Taking advantage of a solution that's tailored to meet the needs of your company can be the difference between technology draining your budget versus having technology propel your profits! If you don't have an IT expert on staff to assist you with making important technology decisions, then you can have Directive be your trusted IT advisor. We can offer you professional advice relating to all of your business technology implementation decisions, which will help provide your business with dynamic and cutting-edge solutions.

To gain a trusted IT adviser on your side by outsourcing your technology management to Directive, give us a call at 607.433.2200.