Small Business Technology and Information Systems Consulting

If you are a small business owner, you know how difficult it can be to make decisions about technology investments.  Normally, you don't have the time it takes to research and make informed decisions about IT for your business. The number of issues and vendors can be overwhelming.  Maybe you rely upon your brother-in-law or grandchild's advice.  Do they really understand both technology and your business? Typically, they know one or the other.

As a small business owner, you probably realize that technology is becoming a more integral aspect of marketing and operating a small business.  While it is true that the use of some computer technologies can give your business a competitive edge, it is also true that many technologies and skills are now considered to be basic business necessities.  Communication, data storage, networking, information processing, and security are just a few concerns.

In this day and age, bad information technology decisions can have a negative impact on the bottom line of your small business. This is especially true if the resources you have to devote to IT are limited. You need to be able to plan and implement technologies that will make the most of your budget.

How can we help? In many ways. It can be as basic as helping you sort through vendors and finding products in a way that keeps your best interests in the forefront of the process.  For example, let's say that you need to set up a network in your business office and you go to Joe Cable & Co. to ask them to price a cable system for you.  Does Joe Cable & Co. understand your system needs from both a business and an IT perspective or just from the cable side of the house?  Is it possible that Joe Cable & Co. are local value-added resellers for a national cable corporation? If so, could they recommend another company's cabling system if it was better for you than the one that they sell?  Do you really understand what Joe Cable & Co. is saying when they mention near-end crosstalk and channel testing for your new Cat 6 gigabit cable?

We understand how business systems should align with business goals and we know how to cut through industry jargon.  As an advisor, we can help you find vendors and information technology products that will work for your small business. Information systems should work to support your business, not the other way around.  We can help you review potential technology investments and manage them from a financial, as well as an information technology, perspective.

The Joe Cable & Co. example illustrates one small way that we can help you manage technology.  We can help you consider whether to purchase or lease the new computers that you need for your growing office. At the same time, we can help you consider operating systems and security issues when deciding whether to implement a peer-to-peer network or use a domain server. Maybe your salesperson needs to connect to the office from the road.  Not only can we help you decide whether or not to implement your own VPN, use Windows 2003 terminal services or  GoToMyPC, we can calculate the payback period on the investment proposals and compare them for you. 

Maybe you need to sell your small business products over the Internet.  That would involve contracting with a Web-based credit card processor.  We can help you plan the return on your investment as you budget the expected per-item percentage charges, flat-rate fees, and merchant account fees. We can help you understand the sales and federal income tax issues as well as the privacy issues that impact your online business. We can help you understand how web technologies can improve the reliability and security of your online small business operations.  We can help you develop a plan for evaluating, purchasing, and implementing  technologies.  In short, we can help you make the best of your IT budget dollars.