In the demanding year-end period of planning for next year and putting budgets into place, “leave well enough alone” may get applied to projects and equipment that seem to be holding up pretty well. You might think hopefully they can be put off for another year. This practice may work in some areas, but technology is not one of them.
Whether the temptation to ignore your technology is that it’s too inconvenient or too expensive to change, letting workstations, phone systems, and networks go past end of life or warranty can cost you way more than the cost to replace them.
Running your technology past it’s recommended end of life gets expensive. If hardware fails, your business can experience significant downtime. In addition to the loss of production, the cost to get equipment back up and running will rapidly add up as IT scrambles to brings systems back online.
Nothing lasts forever. You can avoid the expense of letting technology fail by taking these steps:
Budget for technology
Instead of reacting when something goes wrong, plan for ongoing technology maintenance and upgrades. By aligning technology upkeep with business goals and including the plan in your budget, your business has effective technology that will help you reach your strategic goals. Unplanned downtime, on the other hand, throws your company into crisis mode and deflects from progress toward goals.
Schedule upgrades and routine maintenance
Depending on your business’ production trends, implement new technology and scheduled maintenance during your natural downtime – weekends or evenings for example – keeps your operations current while minimizing customer impact.
Implement a replacement schedule
By putting computers on a 3 to 5 year cycle of replacement, you spread out the cost of replacement without hindering production. One idea is to give your power users the fastest, newest computers.
Keep warranties current
It’s critical to stay on top of warranties so you’re not caught without support or even parts to repair equipment. If a server that’s out of warranty goes down, you’re looking at several days of downtime. End-of-life software also presents cybersecurity risks and the potential for downtime.
Companies can’t function without technology today. Instead of leaving well enough alone, be proactive this year and make a technology plan that will propel your business to greater heights in 2018. Sit down with the IT professionals at Macatawa Technologies to get on the road to a technology cycle.
