How is your IT team viewed inside your organization? Are they given a seat at the table when it comes to strategic planning for the next year? Or are they treated more like plumbers or exterminators — definitely helpful, but more like a necessary expense for when things go wrong? 

When we work with clients, we frequently find it’s the latter. And that’s unfortunate, because internal IT teams can do a lot to help a company become more profitable, if only they were listened to more often. So our IT experts thought it might be helpful if they compiled a list of the many ways IT teams can — and often do — bring more value to a company. 

Feel free to, you know, leave this lying around…

6 Ways To Communicate IT’s Value

IT teams have a unique point of view. They know what frustrates end users, what tools and solutions are working well, and where improvements could be made. They probably also know exactly where your biggest risks are and how you could minimize them. From what we’ve seen, they should be consulted far more often. But here are five big ways that IT teams can be tied to real, measurable ROI. 

1. They Can Help You Meet Your Goals Sooner

Are your systems and tools aligned with your business goals? If you don’t know the answer, you should ask your team. And if you haven’t had this discussion before, there’s likely to be a mismatch. 

If so, that may be a bit of good news in disguise. Perhaps the key to being more responsive, freeing up your sales team to be more proactive, and making your entire organization perform more efficiently is swapping out a single tool. And if some of your IT personnel have worked for organizations like yours, they might already know which one to get. 

2. They Can Help You Become More Competitive 

Working faster, accomplishing more with less overhead, eliminating errors, solving frequent customer pain points — to our ears, these and many others are great challenges to bring to your IT team. 

It may be that there are tools on the market now that offer better integrations, so tasks that once took hours can be partially or completely automated. As an added bonus, you might be able to reduce errors and offer your employees a much better experience so they’re more likely to stick around longer. 

3. They Can Help You Reduce Your Risk of Disruptions and More

Do you know where your biggest risks are? Most small to midsize businesses tend to underestimate cybersecurity threats. And they also tend to underestimate the value of effective security awareness training and other security improvements that IT teams can provide. 

But not all disruptions are caused by hackers. Even a simple equipment failure can be extremely costly. 

The Costs of Business Disruptions

Let’s attach some real numbers, so you can see what your IT team is actually saving you. 

• 54% of businesses said they experienced a downtime incident in the past 5 years that lasted at least 8 hours
• 45% of businesses experience downtime from hardware failure
• The average cost of downtime per minute for small businesses is $427 and $9,000 for larger enterprises

Looking at these stats, it’s easier to see what your team might have prevented and exactly how much that prevention is worth. And if you’d like for them to add even more value, you probably just need to ask. If your IT team is like most, they’ll jump at the chance to increase your security. 

4. They Can Wow You With Their Productivity Tips

Your office looks busy, but why isn’t more getting done? There could be a few good reasons that have very little to do with your staff. If you have a chat with your IT team, they might tell you that your internet simply isn’t up to the challenge of cloud computing, and it’s adding time to even the simplest of administrative tasks. 

The Hidden Productivity Drain of Poor Connectivity 

Poor connectivity is a pretty common problem, and one that is largely invisible. But here are a few statistics that paint a clear picture…

5. They Can Solve Persistent Communication Problems

How often do you or your staff spend each day toggling between different communication tools to find the information or files you need? Are too many tools making it difficult to onboard new people? Or, to cut right to it, does your office staff tend to play the blame game? You’re not alone. 86% of employees and executives cite the lack of effective collaboration and communication as the main causes for workplace failures. 

Complex communication problems may just be technology problems. And technology problems often have simple fixes if you ask the right people. 

6. They Can Help You Plan Ahead

This one’s especially important. IT people aren’t often consulted when it comes to setting an annual budget. But chances are good that your team is well aware of what should be replaced in the next year and what needs to change as soon as possible. And they also probably have a decent idea of how much it will cost and how long it will take to get set up.

How To Get a Quick IT Roadmap

To be fair, many IT teams in recent years have been too bogged down in daily tasks to keep tabs on where your systems, products, and tools are in their respective IT lifecycles. But this task can be outsourced. For example, at Marco, we offer different assessments to make it easier to plan ahead:

1. Cybersecurity Assessments, which are specifically designed to evaluate your current security posture and identify any risks, vulnerabilities, and missing safeguards 
2. Technology Assessments, which can focus on an insurance event, a change in business leadership, budgetary planning, remote work, and more

While these assessments are quite helpful for organizations working without a full-time IT staff, they’re just as helpful for organizations that have their own IT teams. In fact, one of the things that makes these assessments especially meaningful for us is that once we’ve made our final presentation, we often see that C-suite executives start collaborating more closely with their IT teams, and we know that from here on out, everyone’s life is going to start getting a whole lot easier. 

We should also add that our assessments are quite different from the simple remote scan that other technology providers will offer. Read up on what a Marco Technology Assessment can offer your business by clicking the link below!