When buying technology, keep it simple and real
THERE IS NO WAY around it, growing companies face increasing technology budgets.
Many forces act to continually press communications and computing charges upward. You need to exchange information with your customers and suppliers – and they are upgrading. You are continually hiring from a younger workforce and they want to work with the newest equipment. Your older equipment needs repair and you find that parts are no longer available. You have more people and you need more stuff.
Face it, this is forever, so maximize the return on your continuing technology investment.
You can make the most of your budget by fighting the two most tempting and consistent influences on these purchases: affinity to complexity and departure from reality. When you keep simplicity and reality at the top of your decision tree, you’ll make better purchases. Technology will serve you, not the other way around.
First, simplicity There are two important elements in maintaining a simple approach to technology: simple devices and simple plans. Combined, they produce effective solutions to your business problems. As an example: multi-function devices, such as a printer/scanner/copier/fax, are seductive.You seem to get so much for so little.You almost feel like you are getting something for nothing. After all, you needed a printer, why not get a copier for free? You were going to need one someday anyway.
These beasts are not simple. Often, each of the components functions at a level just a bit below what it achieves were it standing alone. Remember that when one component breaks down, the whole thing is dead. Do you really want to stop receiving those faxed purchase orders because the scanner is broken?
Got time to burn? Probably not. Need a printer? Buy a printer. Need a fax machine? Buy one. You’ll spend more in total, and much less in the long run.
Similarly, your plan for technology deployment should remain as simple as possible. In many cases, the true driving factors are not technology-related. Need a new word processor? Don’t try to compare features and poll employees. It is simple. Decide who it is that you routinely exchange documents with. Then buy what they have. Stick with one version and buy a copy for every desktop computer. In most cases, one simple requirement overrides all those elements in your pros-and-cons chart. Skip the chart and go with simplicity.
The bottom line: Buy the simplest thing that solves your problem.You can look ahead a little, but it doesn’t help to look ahead too far. The simplest thing today may be obsolete tomorrow. You can’t win so don’t fight that battle.
Check reality Be real and it will lead to simplicity. Your business problems fall in two groups: problems that can be economically solved by technology and problems that cannot. If necessary, get help to recognize the differences and be realistic about them. Recognize that your staff has inherent likes and dislikes, knowledge, skills, mindset and even personality. In a company your size, you can bet your people are more alike than different. Because you read about a new palmtop wireless organizer doesn’t mean it will work with your employees. Do any of them carefully track task lists and actively maintain their contact lists? If so, maybe that palmtop is a good idea. If not, they won’t start doing all of those things just because they have a new toy.
If you have a hard time meeting schedules because your people coordinate poorly, technology may help hide the problem but it will still be there. A better time clock does not make more on-time employees. These are management issues solved by application of your brilliance, not by deployment of the Latest Cool Thing.
On the other hand, if you have a far flung sales group that aggressively seeks new customers pushing at the geographical bounds of your venture, get them all cell phones, laptops and palmtops. They’ll use them. In fact, they’ll use them up.
You already know more than you think you do. If you need help with the details, get it, but only if this helper obeys your new rules of simplicity and reality
[contact] Kirk Hoaglund is CEO and managing partner of Clientek in Minneapolis, which helps companies find simple and real technology solutions: 612.379.1440; kirk.hoaglund@clientek.com; www.clientek.com
