With today's game-changing technologies, however, too much caution might leave you trailing your competitors and put your business at risk. If wait-and-see best describes your approach, here are three reasons to consider more proactive tactics when evaluating your organization's technology adoption.
1. Small and midsize businesses are a target for hackers
Security breaches harm your reputation. Lost revenue, fleeing customers, and multiple lawsuits can destroy even the strongest business. Hackers tend to see your business as easy prey—and they're usually not wrong. In fact, data thieves often target small businesses because they expect security will be lax.
The Ponemon Institute reports that 61 percent of SMBs experienced a cyberattack in 2017. What's more, breaches are more successful when a small or midsize business is the mark; the Ponemon Institute also found that only 21 percent of SMBs rate their ability to mitigate cybersecurity risks as highly effective. And USA Today estimates that cyberthreats cost SMBs between $84,000 and $148,000 per event; 60 percent of SMBs go out of business within six months of a cyberattack.
Protecting your data now costs far less than recovering from a hack or compliance violation later. By laying a strong security groundwork early and updating it regularly, not only can you address business priorities head on, but you'll be in a good position to safely adopt other transformative technologies, like cloud and mobile.
2. Business downtime is costly and occurs regularly
If your network is down, you're losing money. Network downtime costs businesses $1.55 million every year, Small Business Trends reports. But downtime affects more than the bottom line; it eats about 545 hours of staff productivity every year, too.
Cloud solutions provide built-in security controls and disaster recovery, ensuring that your business stays as secure as it can while avoiding costly downtime due to disaster or loss of data. SMBs are moving applications to the cloud to serve their backup and recovery needs. Backup and recovery capabilities matter because data fuels your business. When data loss occurs, backups provide copies that can be used for recovery if the loss is permanent. Cloud provides an additional place to store information in the event on-site systems become too costly or are wiped out by natural or man-made disasters.
Not only do organizations receive backup and recovery benefits from the cloud, they also see shifting some business functions, such as storage and collaboration apps, as a way to modernize IT, lower technology expenses, and create greater business profitability.
3. Customers want reliable access whenever, wherever, and however
Forrester Research calls this customer attitude the mobile mind shift. This means that customers expect to accomplish what they want at the instant they want it, all on a mobile device.
Customers want to receive service or contact your employees when it's most convenient for them. Your employees expect this capability, too. They see mobile access as a productivity enhancement because it allows them to work where, when, and how they choose.
For any organization, customer retention is a top concern. If you can't offer the services your customers want, they will look elsewhere. For many, mobility is the missing piece of the puzzle. Making mobile platforms available to your customers could be the advantage that elevates your business to the next level, leaving your competitors in the dust.
If you want your business to thrive, wait-and-see is not a viable strategy. Even if you're a little nervous about these moves, today's advances have made it easier and cheaper than ever to use new technology for your benefit. And if you're not making these moves, rest assured that your competitors are. Learn more about how HPE small and midsize business solutions can help your business move forward.
Ready to take the next step? Check out the SMB Hybrid IT for Dummies Guide. Because there are no dumb questions!
Or are you ready to purchase? Visit the HPE Store.
Robert Checketts
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
twitter.com/HPE_Servers
linkedin.com/showcase/hpe-servers-and-systems/
hpe.com/servers
RobertChecketts
Robert has over 25+ years of IT Marketing and Product Management leadership experience spanning country, Regional and WW organizations. Robert is a marketing executive with extensive experience in field marketing, channel marketing and product marketing on a global basis and is driven to deliver SMB’s end-to-end affordable infrastructure that’s secure from the start, optimized for every workload, packaged for many consumption models, ready to scale, and easy to manage.
