Small business owners are familiar of how many hats they have to wear such as a Human Resource manager, Marketing Head, Salesman and Business development manager and even a IT manager, also known as CIO (Chief Information Officer) in larger companies. The most critical aspect of business growth and success are finding new customers, building lasting relationships and effectively pumping organisational revenue in new business development opportunities. That is quote often diluted with IT and Marketing challenges and these businesses don’t have the budget to hire someone full-time to do so. The good news is there is no need to hire someone full time for it.
A Virtual CIO Service, or CIO as a Service, is a simple answer – it allows companies to gain access to a service that they normally wouldn’t be able to afford, and there’s real value in that. Think about some key strategic roles that you’d normally have within a large enterprise – roles like CFO, CIO, CDO, COO. These are filled with highly skilled and knowledgeable people who can make a real difference to the organisation, but SMEs can’t afford the luxury as they’re just not big enough to justify these roles as full time, and they don’t have the budget either. Technology plays a pivotal role in driving cost efficiency, improving automation and expanding digital channels to maximise customer outreach, yet new business owners make the mistake of doing this on their own and eventually hire externally and albeit inexperienced IT managers who are mostly providing support not strategy or business transformation.
““So how do you get enterprise class IT knowledge and Strategy at a fraction of the cost?”
A Virtual CIO is typically an experienced CIO from corporate experience providing small business IT Consultancy on a part-time adhoc basis. They are able to apply years of best practice and business strategy to benefit small and medium businesses to jump start their digital transformation. Build a short to long term business plan to minimise risk, leverage growth strategies with analysis on best in class tools and services to exploit and get ahead of your competition by better, cheaper and faster.
Essentially you have an on-demand IT Consultant, giving valuable advice on building company IT infrastructure, hiring the right talent, choosing the best in class manged IT solutions to optimise business performance. You lower the total operating costs by choosing tools that make your work more efficient by automation and business productivity. Compliance is the biggest unexpected advantage, as most businesses don’t have a business continuity plan with services to backup critical data and preventive measures to keep your customer and your data from data breaches, viruses and hackers.
Some of the other key benefits of having an IT Consultant for small business:
- Increase focus on your core competency and your business goals. Let the experts manage your IT
- Higher chance of success when you get advisory services from an experienced consultant who has done similar projects and understands business processes
- Cost effective to pay for the job to a consultant instead of full time salary and finding the right permanent talent internally
- Increased security of your assets and your data as we will help you to be safer online and reduce risk
- Improve productivity and efficiency by finding the best in class service delivery for your customers and employees
- Improve employee satisfaction by ensuring your business is not spending their time on IT troubleshooting and empowering them for success
- Get an outside perspective by knowing that what you do is the best way of doing things. Technology is disruptive and you must reap its benefits by ensuring you are maximising it’s potential
- Competitive edge The difference between you and competitor is quite often the excellence in execution and technological advantage
