Technology is everything in our ever-changing business world. If you want your business to remain on top, you have to keep up with the latest and greatest trends. In order to accomplish this, it’s important to be honest about your time. It’s easy for business leaders to think that automation and staying up on the latest trends will help keep issues at bay. While that may hold true in some instances, it is equally important to rely on your people or team of IT project managers to achieve long-term business goals. What does this look like for you?

Be Honest About Your Time

While software and automation streamline processes, it’s important to not rely too heavily on just the technology to solve all your problems. Sometimes, short-term issues arise when employees and team members are not properly trained on the following:

• Security policies and procedures
• Company software
• How to avoid phishing emails and scams
• Proactive IT planning

Software is not a fix-all. It takes the entire organization working in tandem with company technology and innovation to evolve into a well-oiled, automated long-term success. Some of the most successful companies start with something great, but then learn from and improve concepts over time. Look at YouTube, for example. They started as an online platform to share videos and grew to be the second most visited site (behind Google Search). A few years ago they launched YouTube TV, providing live streaming of major networks, a cloud DVR and original YouTube TV programming. YouTube is always learning and improving for the long-term success of their business.

It begins with a team of skilled IT professionals and evolves into AI and machine learning to generate income that results in your ROI.

Be Honest About Your Product Sales

Forecast, forecast, forecast! But forecast wisely. It’s easy to let your ambitions cloud your goals. Sometimes when business is moving in the right direction and revenue is steadily being generated, business leaders may get caught up in proactively solving good problems, and end up taken by surprise when issues arise. Some examples of unexpected short-term issues:

• Client mishaps
• Turnover
• Software glitches
• Servers going offline

It’s better to proactively solve for the bad problems and then react to the good problems. Why? Good problems are often those that generate income:

• Hiring to accommodate future growth
• Increasing supply to meet growing demand
• Increasing advertising and marketing sales

While these are all valid challenges and require some time and attention, it’s best to plan and strategize for the short-term issues (bad problems) and react to what brings you long-term success (good problems).

Be Honest About Your Team

Don’t make the mistake of thinking every new hire will be with the company forever. There’s a major shift  in planning when hiring an employee who only stays with the company for a few months, versus hiring an employee who stays on for five or more years – especially in IT. It is much wiser to assume every employee you hire will only be with you short-term before you invest too much of your time, money and training only to lose them unexpectedly.

Sometimes, the real issue isn’t that you’re hiring the wrong people, it’s that your way of thinking is misaligned with the reality of where you are. The last thing you want to do is blame your employees for the bad problems, as opposed to looking inward and asking yourself, “How is leadership contributing to turnover?” It all starts with your mindset and how you focus your time on strategy and  planning for long-term business goals.

Software constantly requires you to have the bandwidth, wherewithal and ability to maintain its core functions. And this is especially important for the small business owner: It’s one thing to try to increase your sales base, but it’s something else entirely to focus all of your time on this and ignore the short-term issues happening in the background. To get the right team of people, you need to approach hiring with the right mindset. Don’t take your eye off the bad problems because you’re giving all your focus to the good problems.

Achieve Long-term Business Goals with Afidence

Get more done, stress less and empower your team with the technology consultants at Afidence. We help you stay on track so that you can focus on the bigger needs of your business. Your long-term success should not be hindered by technology. When you feel hemmed in by challenges, our goal is to help you discover what’s possible. Business technology should lift you up, not drag you down. Contact us today so we can help you solve the problems you want to solve by collaborating on the best solutions for your business.