Small-Business IT Investment
From August 2005
Community Comments
Budget and Battle the Hype
By Patricia Kutza
The relentless parade of technologies thatpromise cost savings is a siren call towardwhich few small-business IT decisionmakers can turn a deaf ear. Such buzz-worthy concepts as WiFi,WiMax, VoIP and ZigBee pepper their vocabulary as they analyze which products and strategies will best fulfill their mandate: grow revenue, increasetheir customer base and comply with regulatory demands.
Given an IT environment fraught with hazards, it’s a wonder so many small businesses do flourish. “There’s a lack of appropriate IT products soldin appropriate ways by IT vendors,”says Patrick Cook, chief technology officer of the San Jose–based Small Business Technology Institute, a nonprofit organization that offers complimentary consulting and low-cost training to small businesses.
“Solutions tend to be either too simplistic or too complex,” he says. Adding to the dilemma is a shortage of unbiased technical advocacy and too few tools that can be used to assess the true business value ofIT implementations.
Elaine Hoffman, co-founder and CEO of EMH Opinion Sampling Inc., a Sacramento-based market-researchdata collection service,says that keeping EMH’s technology goal clearly in mind wards off the temptation to adopt sexy solutions that promise time and cost savings. “Our top priority is to use technologies that produce reliable results,” she says.
Reliability Critical
That priority means making sure that EMH has the right number of properly configured CATI-enabled (computer assisted telephone interviewing) data collection stations for its staff of 140 interviewers and that the company network stays up with reliable data recovery methods. It also means its CATI software must enable its outbound calling operations to run smoothly with efficient data capture and storage.
Continued...
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