If your company is pushing off technology decisions to the IT department, you may be pushing it off to the wrong people. Not that they don’t know what they’re doing. But effective technology strategies cannot be pushed off. They must start at the top, with the users in alignment and constant re-alignment with overall plans and strategies.

 The problem is not that IT people may do the wrong things. But without executive-level champions, they may not get the support they need to do anything at all. That leaves accounting offices adrift and falling behind.

Too often, C-Level executives don’t fully trust their own IT people to make important decisions. As a result, the company falls into an expensive and time-consuming break-fix cycle that could have been avoided if only top leadership had taken some time to understand their company’s long-term needs and lay out a strategic plan. Here are some of the fastest and easiest strategies to implement, with the some of the best ROI.

1. Add a second and/or third monitor. 90 percent of companies are already implementing dual monitors according to an Info Tech Partners North America (ITPNA) survey. But 37 percent have given at least some people a third monitor, up from 10 percent in 2007. Dual monitors cut task times by 20 percent; the third monitor becomes essential in the paperless office.
2. Start scanning. Scan everything at the front end and invest in dedicated work stations where administrative staff can handle it efficiently. About 81 percent of accounting firms are already doing it.
3. Stop buying desktop PCs. Instead buy laptops. The professional’s rule of thumb is that everyone who works out of the office one day per week or more should have a laptop as their only machine. Stick to the name brands — Dell, Toshiba and HP. If you standardize on brands and the business models, your firm could save 26 percent on total cost of ownership.
4. Move backups offsite. That means uploading to the internet cloud. The tape drive you have today will be the last one you will ever own. Small companies should start with network attached storage drives (NAS, for short) to consolidate data. Then they can choose from Mozy or Carbonite as off-site repositories. Larger companies should look into DoubleTake, Data Domain, Xcentric and TROI.

 We would add one more point to this – #5.  Implement technology to help you get more from less.  Of course, a great example is sales automation with a CRM solution.  And now is the ideal time to do it.  Implementing a sales automation solution in times like these, when business is slow, is easier on you, and you’ll be ready to thrive and survive when the economy recovers. Sage is even offering several money saving promotions to help get you started (or re-started) in the right direction.  Read more about these special offers below.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 at 2:43 pm and is filed under Newsletter and Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.