Three Signs Your Business Technology is Due for a Refresh

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As a business owner, technology can improve your processes and efficiency, helping your team to maximize their working hours. By adding new technology to your office setup, you can take your business to the next level. Whether you need to add new solutions to your workplace or just upgrade your current hardware, it’s important to consider how outdated technology could impact your day to day operations. Keep reading to discover some of the key signs that it’s time to upgrade your technology this year.

Slow Technology

If your employees are constantly complaining of slow technology and computing issues, then this is one of the top indicators that it’s time to improve your computing systems. The longer you use a computer system, the slower it’s going to get, which will impact your operations and security settings. Most companies have a timeframe they follow for updating their computers, such as every three to five years.

Every four years, we recommend that you upgrade your servers. While you could put this off a little longer, it’s generally not recommended, as it can be more time consuming the longer you leave it. Make sure you add extra time for this project, so that you cover yourself carefully when it comes to upgrading your infrastructure.

Company Growth and Expansion

Expanding your company is an exciting opportunity, but it’s one that comes with many costs and requirements. When your company grows, you’ll need new technology to support this expansion and the demands that are placed on your infrastructure. This upgrade should be seen as a positive one instead of adding stress to your workload, but you may need to consider your whole infrastructure and the possibility of using cloud computing.

Legacy software is one of the main areas we encourage you to look at when your company is growing. The more you hope to expand your company, the greater risk you have on this type of software holding you back. Old software won’t support your future plans, but we know it can be a challenge to stay ahead of the competition in this area. Create a plan for the future to avoid further issues as your company goes from strength to strength over the upcoming months.

Remote Teams

The recent pandemic has seen a huge increase in the number of employees working remotely. This requires you to completely rethink your computing systems, using cloud computing to offer remote access to your systems. While there are some challenges with remote teams, a cloud-hosted service allows you to share resources via the cloud. This is beneficial for both the remote team and the in-house team, who can collaborate on projects and enjoy good communication.

One of the top benefits of cloud computing is that it can reduce technology costs by up to a third, helping to both improve your operations and save you money. It’s easier than ever before to manage assets and deploy resources, so look into the Software-as-a-Service options that could benefit your business.

Our team is here to support you with any technology upgrades you need this year. Contact us today to learn more about how we can assist your business.

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When is it Time to Upgrade Your Technology?

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It can be difficult to know when to upgrade your technology in today’s ever-changing business technology landscape, especially when there are so many options available. How do you avoid getting caught up in the excitement of every new thing? It starts with knowing where your organization is and whether you need to change.

Where Are You Right Now?

Let’s say you want to upgrade your workstation to a newer model with more powerful components. Consider what this might entail and whether the upgrade will make an impact on your day-to-day tasks. Perhaps upgrading your graphics card will help you be a more effective graphic designer, or more RAM might mean you can multitask more often. These are great, but in specific contexts, your average sales representative, for example, doesn’t need a video editing rig.

Your Operations Are Suffering

The major telltale sign that your organization should upgrade its technology is that operations are suffering in a significant way. Let’s say that you have your entire staff accessing the same network infrastructure from an antiquated server unit. The workstations themselves are working quite well, but the server unit is outdated and runs at a sluggish pace. This impacts not just one or two employees but your entire workforce. In situations like this, you absolutely do want to upgrade when possible.

Your Operations Will Suffer in the Near Future

The other situation when you might consider upgrading your technology is if your operations will be impacted sooner rather than later. A perfect example of this is when your operating system is about to reach its end of life and will no longer be supported by patches and security updates. You want to take care of this before you experience issues related to this lack of updates rather than after the fact.

In other words, it’s all about being proactive with your upgrades but not being impulsive with them. If you have trouble with this concept, don’t worry—we’ve got your back!

If you need help when it comes time to upgrade your technology, WheelHouse IT can help. To learn more, reach out to us at (877) 771-2384.