Owners of small and medium-sized businesses can easily feel like they’re at an IT disadvantage. If even conglomerates struggle with long-term planning, it’s clear that SMBs face an even steeper uphill battle. Most small companies start with a reactive strategy, which can work for a while until they start to scale. But then cracks start to show.
So how do SMBs know if their IT setup is normal or abnormal? How can you tell if you’re dealing with minor friction or major problems? And how can you plan in an age where technology changes so quickly? Here, we’ll look at how IT “normally” progresses as companies grow, so you have a baseline for comparison.
Keeping the Lights On (10-30 Employees)
In the smallest businesses, everyone is wearing different hats, and entire days are understandably spent just trying to keep the place afloat:
Leaders usually assign IT to a capable party, like an owner, office manager or outside consultant, and they standardize a basic IT strategy (e.g., Microsoft or Google, Airbooks or Dells, firewalls or encryption, etc.). Systems evolve based on the business’s immediate needs, such as a spike in consumer demand or a cybersecurity breach.
The most common hiccups for these organizations usually are that passwords and access controls are inconsistent, IT is entirely in the hands of one or two people, and documentation is often limited or non-existent. Bigger processes, like onboarding and system implementation, are driven by employee memory instead of clear instructions or workflows.
In the beginning stage, leaders are often the escalation point when IT issues interrupt operations. Owners spend time putting out fires or managing applications alongside dozens of other tasks.
Growth Exposes Inconsistencies (30-75 Employees)
As companies grow, leaders start hiring and delegating. New departments and external partners enter the picture to take on additional responsibility:
This is the stage when companies cement their IT leader or team, whether it’s internal or external. Leaders standardize the hiring process, device procurement/replacement policies, access control and password requirements.
In many cases, this is when leaders may begin to struggle with managing IT consistency across new departments or sectors. They may also feel pain points related to backup recovery or system security not being routinely tested or employees lacking visibility into system performance.
This stage is tricky because leaders are typically just starting to hammer everything into place, only to jostle the ship with each new onboard. So, even though you may have policies in place, you might see them implemented differently based on department.
During this stage, leaders may not have much time to think about IT, nor do they always have clear visibility into its inner machinations. This is usually when the owner’s mindset shifts from the financial cost of technology to the technology’s overall impact on performance or safety.
The Business Depends on Technology (75-150 Employees)
This is the stage where there’s no turning back. Businesses further expand their IT staff, business-critical applications and support processes.
Many either hire more staff or siphon more responsibility to an external partner, like an MSP. Leaders standardize endpoint management and multi-factor authentication, and escalation procedures and user provisioning become even more thorough.
However, this is also the time when systems become harder to integrate and maintain. Workarounds from previous eras can become more burdensome and time-consuming, and critical knowledge may still be concentrated with a handful of people.
In the big picture, as a business becomes more dependent on technology, leaders start prioritizing systems and support models that can adapt with the company and sustain future growth. Leaders stop responding to individual issues and instead focus on how to best keep interruptions at bay.
Technology Is Both an Operational Risk and Growth Enabler (150+ Employees)
In the last stage, IT planning becomes fully aligned to the business’s objectives. Instead of individually reacting to each new sector or risk, IT staff makes strategic decisions to support the larger IT framework.
Businesses take proactive steps like formalizing a business continuity plan, maintaining strong application governance and prioritizing change and identity management. For these companies, IT performance directly impacts company growth.
But even mature setups come with important considerations. Systems become harder to change, standards may still vary across different entities, technical debt can limit future improvements and competing priorities can complicate IT planning.
The larger you grow, the more risk management comes into play. Leaders should operate at the highest level at this point. They should consider how to best move the company forward without compromising security or operational performance.
How Strong Is Your Infrastructure?
While every company has its own unique trajectory, there are a few common perspectives that you can use to help determine your infrastructure’s strength:
- Leaders can’t answer questions: While owners shouldn’t know it all, they should have a solid idea of how their IT runs and maybe more importantly, how the company will handle a security incident if and when it happens.
- Leaders are the only answer: If your company is in the latter stages of growth and you’re still depending on the owner for guidance, it’s a sign that you need more support.
- Growth is limited: A strong IT system can handle growth, even if that growth is not always perfectly streamlined. If you’re still using the same workarounds every time you add a new employee or implement a new application, it will lessen your progress.
Aligning Your Business’s IT With Reality
Today’s infrastructure demands have never been higher, and companies of all sizes are up against serious obstacles.
You can’t ever completely eliminate IT friction, but you can dramatically reduce it when you can manage each growth stage. If you’re trying to distinguish everyday growing pains from serious foundational gaps, it helps to compare this roadmap with your professional progress. As long as you can stay on course, you’ll spend less time managing disruptions and more time supporting long-term objectives.
To learn more, contact your Warren Averett Technology Group advisor directly, or ask a member of our team to reach out to you.
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