IT Strategy - a Virtual CIO for SMEs
IT Strategy for an online world - Enabling success, efficiency and resilience.
Most businesses with less than 200 staff don't generally need a full time CIO. We lead and coach your IT team (internal or outsourced) to manage the Information, Communication and Technology strategy across your team, aligned to delivering your business goals and success. A good IT manager or virtual CIO, makes the IT simple and clear for other managers, turning complex tech, into simple building blocks that enable business success.
Enabling your success, efficiency and resilience - a smooth running engine
Using IT is like driving a car. Most people get in their car and turn the key, knowing where they want to go, confident that the engine will run smoothly to help take them there.
You know what success means for your business - you know where you want to go. Your IT systems, and the people that make them work, are a key part of your engine of success. We help ensure they operate aligned to your goals, efficiently, and with resilience for the long term. Together, an effective IT strategy aligned to your business, will enable your business to be even more successful, growing profitably now, and into the future for you and your team.
Having the IT of your business as a smooth running engine allows you to focus on the rest of your business - customers, staff, the wider market - navigating the challenges, and take advantage of business opportunities, when they occur. You want to know that every day, your IT systems will run smoothly, to enable your business be as efficient as possible, and as resilient as you wish, to support the short term and long term success of your people, your customers, and your business as a whole.
Not every engine is the same - just like there is no one size fits all for IT. For some people, a basic 1 litre engine is fine, aligned with a simple chassis, suspension and 4 wheels, to get from A to B. Perfect, and cheap. For other people, a smooth, relatively powerful, straight 6 is the perfect balance, in. for example an E28 BMW M5 (that's the image to the right from Bimmerfile.com). For other people, ultimate performance needs more power as delivered by modern engines - and as you add power, you also need to ensure that the rest of the chassis, suspension, and even the tyre compounds are equally well developed and aligned. Otherwise the car crashes when it tries to turn a corner at speed. Or you can strip out lots of the complexity, and have an electric motor - but you still need the right chassis, suspension and tyres to maximise either performance or efficiency, and cope with the weight of the batteries. The approach to refuelling/recharging and maintenance also changes.
The same applies to IT - the IT is like the engine, but is integrally linked to the rest of the business, which is like the chassis, suspension, tyres, dashboard, and driver. We help align, tune, manage the maintenance and upgrade/change if necessary, the IT engine of your business, aligned to the overall business performance you want to achieve.
Delivering your success, efficiency, and resilience:
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We focus on your success, whatever success means to you. It could be significant growth in revenue, profitability, staff satisfaction or efficiency. Or just stability. Each business is different, we understand you, and then align to support you.
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We aim to optimise efficiency and resilience within your business. However, there is a dynamic tension between efficiency and resilience, achieving maximum efficiency and maximum resilience, has a cost impact. Therefore IT strategy is important:
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Efficiency is really important to ensure that the money that customers pay for your products or services (your revenue) turns into profits.
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Resilience is also important for long term success of the business and staff - if you or your systems are too efficient, then you may maximise profits in the short term, but may not be able to cope with challenges as they arise (which they will), and can lead to failure of either systems, processes, or staff.
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Cost of achieving either is dependent upon the benefit - no point making a process efficient if the cost of automating is more than the time spent doing it. No point adding resilience, for a risk that the business can cope with anyway. But spending money on efficiency or resilience can be like rocket fuel, if spent in the right places.
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Having a clear view of what success looks like, helps guide the the right balance of efficiency and resilience, at an appropriate cost, to give the best chance of achieving that success.
Getting this balance of efficiency, resilience, and cost, is where our experience really adds value to help your enable your success.
Want to find out more?
How do we deliver success, efficiency and resilience for you? Read more:
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Read more about our formula for success - (EOS + 2 x HEM) x Technology
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(Coming soon) Access our Virtual CIO kit to enable yourself or key team members to become your part-time/virtual CIO
If you run an SME with 10 - 250 staff, and have a clear vision of success, whether that's large or small, and you have the team, processes and IT systems in place to deliver that success, that is fantastic. We hope all your dreams come true, and I'm sure they will, if you keep focused on that vision.
If you run an SME with 10 - 250 staff, and would like some help ensuring that the IT team, and systems are aligned to your business success, or would like help making the appropriate adjustments to turn your team, processes, or systems to turn them into a smooth running engine of success to confidently get to your goals, then feel free to contact us for a free, no obligation 1.5 hours "Introduce" session.
We'd love to discuss and understand you a little more of what success means to you, and together decide whether we can help enable your success.
