Information technology systems play a critical role in all growth strategies, from helping to achieve results to coping with the expanded scale of the organization. Technology improves productivity by enabling communication, collaboration, and knowledge sharing that allows employees to innovate. QAT's consultants can help you select, deploy, manage and exploit the IT needed to be successful in growing your business.

Many small and mid-size businesses have ambitions to grow beyond their current size in terms of revenue and operational scale. That starts with increasing your number of prospects and your effectiveness in winning and retaining clients along with attracting and retaining top employees.

Your target market needs to be aware of your solutions or services, and you can increase this awareness through a variety of sales and marketing methods and campaigns. Advertising, promotions, partnerships and demand generation activities can all play a role in this model.

Underlying all your efforts, however, needs to be a robust and accessible store of information about the prospects you generate and their interest in your company. This information needs to be securely stored and yet accessible to those who need it. This may include not only people in your office, but also sales people who are traveling or executives accessing information from home outside regular business hours.

As your development efforts are successful and revenue grows, so does the need for more employees to cope with the demand, perhaps additional locations and certainly more systems to help those people manage the business processes. These systems need to be planned, implemented and supported by highly specialized talent, available as needed.

Information Technology (IT) systems can help to create competitive advantage for your company, by improving customer service, accelerating time to market for new products or services and reducing operational costs by automation of tasks. Stable systems that are securely available to local and remote workers, are the foundation of an effective business.

These IT systems can represent a significant cost however, and there are many choices in terms of the hardware, software, networks and services that you can use. You also have to balance the needs of your business today with those that you foresee in the future. Budget constraints will always affect the path chosen and the speed with which you can advance.

Making the right technology decisions takes a combination of experience and understanding. The experience that comes from having done it successfully before, and the understanding of the particular business opportunity you have.

Making the wrong IT decisions can mean having system breakdowns that impact business for hours or even days. It can mean ending up with poor communications, lack of visibility to critical business information or being vulnerable to security risks. A competitor who is exploiting a relevant technology better can get ahead of you.

Small businesses need to have the best advice in terms of their IT strategy and yet most cannot afford to hire a full time Chief Information Officer (CIO) or even a technical expert.

QAT’s consultants can help to devise a plan for your business, to not only stabilize and secure your current environment, but also to work with you as you plan the future phases of your business and recommend the most appropriate IT strategy for your business. All without having to burden your business with the cost of full-time IT people.

Every small to mid-size business has to focus on the cost elements of their operation and for ways to do more with less. The cost of employee wages and benefits is typically the largest expense line item in any company’s budget. The use of Information Technology (IT) to automate processes and provide secure anywhere access to information increases productivity. IT improves employee and resource efficiency and has been a major driver in economic expansion over the last 30 years. That impact is increasingly seen in the small to mid-size business area, where technology has allowed them to compete effectively with larger companies, to enter new markets and to reduce their costs. Unfortunately, there are also many examples of where small and mid-size businesses have invested in particular technology systems or solutions but have failed to see the expected returns. They have often suffered from having been poorly advised or from lack of understanding of the full requirements of a particular system or its operation.

QAT is a strong supporter of vendor neutrality in terms of technologies, software, and hardware. We understand that technology must not only provide access to information, but make sense of it as well.

An example of one key area of increases in productivity in today’s market is through the secure access to company data and information for mobile workers. These solutions, when applied appropriately, can help workers who are out of the office to function with the same productivity as if they were in the office. They can access the same information, update in the same way and in general keep doing their jobs at the same speed as if they were at their desks.

Even small to mid-size business can’t escape the increasing requirements to comply with local, state, federal and industry specific rules and regulations in terms of how they handle data.

Whether it’s HIPAA compliance in the healthcare industry or SEC requirements in financial services , there are many sectors of activity where client, patient, supplier or employee records, transactions and communications have to be stored, encrypted and archived securely and yet be accessible to authorized users.

Many of these processes are in fact also examples of good practice that could apply to businesses who are not actually obliged to comply with particular rules.

Building Information Technology (IT) support for these kinds of requirements takes a structured and experienced approach. There may be a need for particular procedures and documentation to be in place; for additional security precautions; for secure archiving and retrieval services.

QAT can help you build an IT environment that will help your business satisfy these requirements in the most cost effective way possible.

Growing fast is an exciting, demanding, and scarry time for most small to mid-size businesses. Having a technology partner to guide you through this time will help you take advantage of the situation.

A fast growth stage is often an excellent time to look at the company’s Information technology (IT) infrastructure and support model. For instance:

• Moving to a new office creates an opportunity to get the servers located and set up correctly and to put in wired or wireless networks to connect PCs. It also is a good time to look at your overall support model.
• A period of change for your business is also a time to look at whether you have the support you need for the new and evolving information systems set-up you have.
• If your company is involved in a merger then you will need to integrate the two IT environments of the merged companies and develop an integration strategy for the new company.

QAT can help you get through these changes, and even turn them into opportunities to have a more efficient and effective IT environment. We can help whether you need us for a one-off project or to get things set-up right and then support you going forward.

There are many steps a small to mid-size business can and should take to protect their business, without it being a major financial burden. Something as simple as having a disciplined procedure for taking back-up disks and tapes off-site for storage, can provide a first layer of protection against a major loss of company data. Or using an online back-up solution to securely store critical data.

QAT’s consultants can help review the requirements your business has in terms of being able to keep operating under adverse conditions, to help you understand the costs and find affordable steps and then deploy the selected solutions or define the required procedures.

It turns out that biggest challenge is not being able to afford disaster recovery solutions, but rather simply taking the time to evaluate the different options. Having QAT’s consultants to talk to can make the whole process much more manageable.