Jack Welch believes “There are only two sources of competitive advantage: the ability to learn more about our customers faster than the competition and the ability to turn that learning into action faster than the competition. Is technology your competitive advantage or is it your competitors?
Technology underpins the success of your business, requiring reliable and secure IT systems that enhance the experience with your clients. For some Dallas businesses, handling IT internally can save money as the entire focus is just “keeping the lights on” thinking, without innovation.
A KLTO mentality diverts resources from core business activities, secretly grows technical debt, leading to higher business risk. A single IT Manager or small in-house IT teams tend to be focused on business continuity only, spending 80-90% of the budget on routine tasks, such as system updates, security patches, and troubleshooting. It’s good as it prevents disruptions and maintains service levels.
But, these days, clients are consolidating under M&A, businesses go under, client demands, and the speed of business have accelerated post COVID. Client attrition is high in some organizations and leaders must have strategies to scale up or down, as the business goes. That is why many Dallas / Fort Worth area businesses turn to Managed IT Service providers with experience and an understanding of innovation, like The Fulcrum Group.
Here is why teaming up with a Dallas IT service provider like The Fulcrum Group can introduce processes leading you on a journey of continuous improvement with a focus on value add. Here is more on the five related reasons.
A Technology Roadmap
According to business guru Mike Michalowicz, “The biggest challenge business owners face is knowing what their biggest challenge is.”
Are you having strategic planning discussions with your current IT provider, internal or external? Innovation follows a process like
- Identifying the organization’s vision, mission and goals,
- Taking a snapshot of where you are now,
- Picking a destination in the future of where you want to be,
- Then, identifying the actions you will need to get to your desired next destination.
There is an increasing demand for client experience with our clients. It seems to suggest, if you are not getting better, you are getting worse. More successful firms allocate 10-20% of IT spend for innovative and transformative projects, such as wins with selecting or developing new applications, finding integrations between apps or taking advantage of some of the Office 365 Modern Workforce platforms.
Do you even have an AI Strategy? If you are not already undergoing digital transformation, considering the cloud, cleaning up and securing your data, then you are already behind competitors because several of them have. Access to quality corporate data is fuel to AI initiatives.
Quality IT for Quality Employees
Simon Sinek points out that “Customers will never love a company until the employees love it first.”
Staffing, retention and pay have been a top challenge for small and large organizations alike with estimates of 80% of global firms experiencing retention issues. If you provide your team great software tools and a recent laptop, it is impactful. It could even be part of the pitch to attracting new employees, “we have great technology”. People want to feel like they are part of something bigger than making ends meet,
Maybe the competitor has a KTLO strategy to IT and employees use older laptop, or an older application that requires manual entry. If your culture if good but turnover is high and you provide older equipment, you have to make the correlation of how you take care of your people at work. The organization may think it is saving money with 5-year-old equipment, but is losing good people really saving you money.
IT that Scales With You
“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” Charles Darwin’s statement about natural selection also applies to organizations. The ability to adapt quickly means survival.
Business owners sometimes get so focused on revenues and employee count, but can be less mindful of profitability. If you are having great success, can you scale fast enough with your current internal team or are you in between adding IT headcount? Experiencing some roadblocks you need to get through? Did you know scaling down the number of users can reduce your monthly managed services costs.
You already use fractional resources successfully, as CPAs, outsourced CFO and legal or maybe a sales leader. Fractional resources facilitate business agility by allowing your firm to be what it needs to be in uncertain times. It usually also provides access to subject matter experts in areas that a single person could not pull off alone. Networking and cybersecurity alone have multiple disciplines within them, that only a rare person could have (which if there, also makes them attractive for poaching). Be ready, be able, to adapt when or how needed.
Cybersecurity for the Times
Robert S. Mueller III, former Director of the FBI, famously stated: “There are only two types of companies: those that have been hacked, and those that will be.”
If all of a companies security spending is around prevention tools, and all tools eventually fail, then they are missing the obvious. You can’t buy your way to security as you always need to factor in process. Security frameworks like CIS CSC v8.1 formalize the process and encourage efforts to identify hardware and software in your environment as well as adding detection and alerting tools. Every email is a chance for an attacker to sneak in the front door. The best Dallas businesses also have the virtual “security guard” technologies to see when someone eventually gets past.
Most organizations think they are fine. Attackers can breach you in seconds but may take months to investigate what data of yours they have access too, which of your clients you might facilitate them getting in to or for other reasons. There is no way to know without specialized tools, doing specialized monitoring of accounts, permission changes and traffic on a network. We ascribe to the never trust, always verify philosophies of zero trust. We always assume we are un-fine, otherwise we are blind to our own blind spots.
Friendly, Local Resources to Work With
In the words of the great Jim Collins, “Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice, and discipline.”
With all the service provider consolidation, small quality shops keep getting absorbed into organizations ran from outside of Texas. Both of our owners are Texas born (Fort Worth and San Angelo) and bred, with an ever-watchful eye to client experience. We choose to care about our team because our team has to choose to care about our clients. You start to lose caring in a rollup, as you become just another number for the man.
All our engineers are local to DFW and in cities such as Dallas, Fort Worth, Irving, Plano and Arlington. You never have to worry about a support engineer on the phone not quite speaking your language (Texan, what did you think). We always strive to be great over good, as good is the enemy of great. Be part of our family and part of our quest for greatness.
Here is where you start at Fulcrum Group, as we offer a comprehensive range of Managed IT services in Dallas, including:
Managed IT Services/IT Outsourcing: Our SPOT Managed IT Services includes a professional, local team of technicians to support your staff, their devices, and the IT infrastructure vital to your business.
Cybersecurity solutions: Our SPOT Shield Managed Cybersecurity and SPOT Shield Penetration Testing solutions offer your business the peace of mind to know that your cybersecurity is being handled so you can sleep at night. And our SPOT Shield SOC MDR provides 24×7 cybersecurity monitoring with Managed Detection & Response to protect you against emerging threats.
Cloud Services & Migration Assistance: The future of AI is digital transformation and that occurs in the Cloud. From Microsoft 365 to SPOT Protect Cloud Backups, The Fulcrum Group is ready to be your Cloud Solution Partner and help enable your future needs.
Want to learn more about Fulcrum Group Managed IT Services? Check out our 2024 IT Services Buyer’s Guide or click HERE for a free Discovery Call to learn how to start your technology journey to having a roadmap.