You've built a business that's good and significant. But if you spend most of your hours in a workday, Googling all the tiny bits and pieces of the tech tools for your team and company operations, maybe it's time to learn how to take back control and manage your own IT.
Today, I'll be sharing how to switch your mindset to a business technology strategy leadership instead of being the savvy IT consultant.
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To learn more about our Cloud Support Service, or schedule an IT Systems Check, contact itGenius - the Google Workspace Experts
Transcription:
In this video, I want to share with you how to take back control and manage the technology in your business. For many business owners technology is a scary black box that they're just basically throwing money at. And what we know from business owners that we've spoken to over more than 10 years and 10s of 1000s of employees across our customers that we've helped, is that technology is something that is a little bit of a scary thing. technologists can sometimes look like this, and can be someone who business owners, you know, put their trust in. But they're not necessarily business partners that work with the business, quite often, there's a little bit of separation. And I would even say, abdication, where a business owner, not understanding technology just leaves it up to someone else. But they're missing out on a whole bunch of leverage and potential upside in their business by implementing great technology strategy. And so that's the concept that I'm going to introduce you to in this video and take you through some of the ways how you can work on your own technology driven leadership. So what this is about for me is to help businesses use technology as part of their business strategy. And we all know about popular businesses that already use technology strategy as the core of their business strategy. And I'm thinking about Silicon Valley type startups, the apples, the Facebook's, these are businesses that have been built exclusively around technology. Now, it doesn't mean that you have to be a sexy Silicon Valley startup with billions of dollars in the bank in venture funding for you to take the same approach to your business, what I believe is that you can take the kind of thinking of those businesses and apply it to a more traditional business, or you may be a bricks and mortar operating business that is very hands on or very people focused or, you know, very focused on being often away from computers, that is absolutely fine. I mean, one of our most successful customers is actually a electrical and plumbing business. And they make use of the Google workspace ecosystem to enable and empower all of their teams to stay connected on the road. And what that means is less downtime, and less phone calls back and forward or text messages back and forth between their staff that are on the road and the office, all using Google's amazing tools. Now, the true cost of having a poor technology strategy shows up in a couple of different areas for businesses. Number one is obviously the cost. You know, if you're investing in infrastructure that maybe you don't need, or, you know, maybe paying for traditional IP support companies that are really incentivized to sell you more and more and more, you know, rather than deliver solutions that are actually going to be scalable, you know, you've got the factor of your time loss there if you're doing it yourself. Or if you're someone who's relying on an IT system that's not really that reliable, you may have downtime, if you're, you know, still running servers in your office and those kind of things can go down. Or if you've got a property portal, you know, Higgledy Piggledy system of Band Aid solutions kind of strapped together, then you may run into issues there as well. I would also say that you have business risk, when your own strategy that you've developed as a business leader, that is uninformed unintentionally, of course, but potentially uninformed is not based on best practice for the IT industry, or for the business industry. And we all know that rather than reinventing the wheel, it's easier to go to someone else who's been there, done that, and work with someone who can actually lead you in the right direction. And so some of the ways that we've used and used technology driven strategy, and we've taken inspiration from those businesses in the Silicon Valley world of, you know, high growth and, and, you know, very, very heavy technology focus, I want to share a couple of those that have been successful for us. Now one of those is moving to an automated billing system, which means that we get paid on time, on time all the time, which is awesome. Our overdue receivables are literally a fraction of a percent of our overall company revenue, which is awesome. We make use of customer communication with a ticketing system, which means that we never lose any of our customer communications to us, it means that there's no drop balls, and we use that shared mailbox system to make sure that we're delivering really great service, we've got more videos on that shared mailbox system on our channel, if you're interested in checking them out, our team will link one of those below. Next up is moving to a remote team and taking advantage of international team members outside our home country so we can access more talent and take advantage of a labor market, which allows us to have more resources to service our customers and build our business faster. And then finally, a systems focus the way that we actually build a business and the mindset and the approach that we have for businesses means that when we have a technology focus, and we use that technology as the underpinning underpinning behind what we do, what that means is that we actually have a business that works more smoothly because we're relying on technology for automation, rather than relying on humans doing absolutely everything in the business. So what I want you to start to think about is how you can develop your CTO or CIO mindset and CIO Chief Technology Officer or Chief Information Officer. And these are it roles in the executive suite. Now, it doesn't matter if you've only got three people in your business, I want you to still embody and think about, well, how would a technology officer of this business think how would an Information Officer of this business think? What kind of things would they be focused on? Would they be focused on security? Would they be focused on maintenance? Would they be focused on mostly strategy, they're not the person who's doing the helpdesk support. And so I want to elevate your job from being the person doing the Help Desk support to the person managing the strategy. So here's some of the strategies that a CTO or a CIO in a business may be thinking about. And you can have a think about how you may approach these strategies inside your business in your business planning. One of those is what is your scale plan for your technology and your systems? How are you going to have your technology systems support your staff so that as the business grows, you've got the right systems in place to support those processes. And we talk a lot about that with the growth roadmap that once you get to the stage of growth, which is between four and 20 employees, you're going to need to start to put in software systems like a CRM system, like maybe a ticketing system for your customer service, that are going to enable your team to have consistent delivery in the way that they're actually delivering to customers. Next up, you've got your people operations, and that is having processes in place in the business for your onboarding of staff and for your off boarding of staff as well. And so that means that you know, what systems does someone need to get set up upon when we employ a new employee, when they start with us? How do we set them up in the different Texas and that they need to get their work done? What is like their standard operating environment, that's a tech tech term for all of the tools that they need to be productive every day? And how can we make sure that that is scalable, some business owners will buy 10 different tools just to get three jobs done. And what happens is, as your team grows and scales, your costs get completely out of control, because you've bought so many different apps and systems that are paid for on a per user basis. And before you know, you're paying crazy amounts of money just to get basic tasks done. Next up data security, making sure that you've got that taken care of in the business. And the simplest way that I can communicate data security is to have very basic, very simple policies, but strong enforcement. And there may only need to be four or five things that you need to do for your technology security to have it nice and tight. But enforcing it strongly is extremely important. Now, if you're interested in a security health check, then jump on one of the links below to get in touch with our team. And if you're an enterprise business, we actually have a specialized security checklist, which we will take your business through to review your Google workspace account, if you're interested in that jump in the links below and drop in your details to get onto a consult with our team. Now finally, ask who not how. And this is one of the most important qualities of a leader not just in technology, but I think in general business management, and that is to make sure that you're thinking about who is the best person or who is the right person to take care of this job, or take care of this strategy, or implement this piece of technology, not worrying too much about the how we need to do it. Your role is to be the steward of implementations of technology, not necessarily to be the one that's actually implementing it. And so I want you to go through a big shift. And that big shift is going to be in the way that you are thinking about how you approach technology in your business, I want you to move to a done with you model rather than a done for you model. many business owners are either doing things completely themselves, and they're doing DIY, they're jumping online, and they're watching YouTube videos. And they're learning how to do things. But all the knowledge is going into the mind of the business owner, or they're relying on someone outside the business to just completely do it for them. And as I said earlier, abdication can creep in there, where you're just leaving it completely up to someone else. And we found some dysfunctions can come out of those relationships where sometimes an IT consultant has so much control over a business, that a business owner becomes fearful to suggest solutions or fearful to actually collaborate with that consultant, because the consultant is basically running the show and the business has long abdicated everything over to them. We want you to find a healthy middle ground between those two, which is done with you. And that means that you are responsible for being involved in the strategy of technology in your business. But the actual implementation gets done by an expert. Now that may be inside the business that may be outside the business that doesn't really matter. You may choose to work with a consultant like us. But the key thing is, is that you are involved at a strategic level, which is great use of your time, but you're not involved with actually doing the rolling out. If you went to a hardware store and bought a bunch of timber and bricks and some concrete, I wouldn't trust you to build a house for me. And so I don't trust business owners to implement technology systems inside their businesses. If Let me try that again. If they want to actually be successful with getting technology that suited to the business, so So what are some of the roles of a technology partner? And what should you be looking out for if you're interested in engaging someone to help out with technology in the business? Well, first of all, they should have a focus on best practice and focusing on supporting your strategic thinking. Next up, they should be focusing on business outcomes. And that really means looking at what is the thing that you want to solve here? Like what do you actually want to get as a business outcome, and that might be more sales, it might be better customer service delivery, it might be a smoother running team, it might be getting prepared to scale up your business, but your technology solutions should always be aligned to your business objectives. Next, up the availab, the bail, the ability to actually deliver. So someone that you don't have to chase one man bands, or you know, really notorious for this, in that you've got to chase them, because they've got so many customers and get completely overwhelmed by time. And so they end up not delivering very well at all. And then finally, and this one should go without saying, but giving you back time, any engagement with a technology consultant should be about actually bringing back time for you in and helping you to reap the benefits of getting more leverage in your business by having someone else do tasks, which are not the best use of your time. Let me say that, again, having someone else doing tasks that are not the best use of your time, if you're interested in billing through us and moving your billing into a relationship with it genius, we've got some amazing offers for you. And that is a transfer in offer, which doesn't cost you anything extra, we give you a bunch of awesome perks from the team here at it genius. Now we have a dedicated google classroom for small business owners, which teaches you how to get the most out of your investment in the Google workspace account. Now, not only do we cover Google workspace, but we cover everything in the realm of growing and scaling a small business, what we've learned about running a remote company for over six years, and even a video series on how to get your inbox down to zero every day, using all of the best features of Gmail that we haven't shared publicly, but is now available for customers that have transferred in all of this is available with quizzes and certifications for your team. So when they complete their training, they'll actually get a certificate to save that they've completed and are competent with using Google workspace. Now that is available on the link below. If you click on to right below this video to transfer in offer, you'll get access to in a couple of minutes, fill out a simple form and move your billing into us. It doesn't cost you any extra on your Google workspace account, because we provide it at the same price that Google does, but you get access to a bunch of benefits, including access to our professional support team. Thanks so much for joining this video. I look forward to catch you in the next one. If you're not already subscribed to our channel, please do that. Drop a like below this video, share it with someone who you think it may benefit and I look forward to catching the next one. I'll see you in the comments down below for any questions that you have. And we'll see you next time.
To learn more about our Cloud Support Service, or schedule an IT Systems Check, contact itGenius - the Google Workspace Experts
