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Benefits Of Choosing A Boutique IT Firm Instead Of A Major IT Firm Your Projects

July 6, 2020 No Comments

Featured article by Ilona Kazimirko, former Venture Capitalist and the founder of GreyLoud

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Information technology or IT is a must-know and must-use technology nowadays because of advancing IT infrastructure and consumer demands. That’s why hiring the right IT services based on your business niche and goals is crucial.

Choosing a smaller IT firm is a good idea even if you have a big company to run. There are many reasons why boutique IT firms are more sought-after instead of IT majors, and these include flexibility, specialization, and personalized IT services that would be discussed further below.

Flexibility Of IT Services

Small IT firms provide more flexible IT services than IT majors. A small or boutique IT firm is composed of a pool of IT professionals, including an application analyst, information systems manager, data analyst, cybersecurity analyst, database administrator, IT consultant, and an IT technical support officer. On the other hand, IT majors are big IT companies that also offer excellent IT services, but usually come in fixed packages.

Choosing a small IT firm provides you with more flexible services at incredibly affordable rates. GreyLoud.com explains that boutique IT firms can provide flexible IT services, which are ideal for small-medium enterprises and cutting-edge startups.

Flexible IT services offered by small IT firms may include the following:

 

– Technology Selection: A small IT firm can help you choose the right technology for your business, such as customer relationship management (CRM)software, enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, point-of-sale (POS), and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.

– Process Development: Gain IT assistance with product design, software prototyping, and technical documentation.

 

 

– Managed Cloud Services: Ensure that your data and processes are stored, processed, and accessed in the cloud or Internet-based storage solutions securely and adequately, preventing cyber hacks and other system vulnerabilities. With more focused IT services offered by small IT firms, you’re assured that there’s always an IT expert who is monitoring your data to avoid data leak and system failure.

 

 

 

Small IT Firms Are More Specialized Than IT Majors

Boutique IT firms are usually more specialized than IT majors, catering to specific business niches, while IT majors provide IT services to general businesses to cover more clients. Small IT firms can work with various industries, like finance, retail and commerce, and hospitality. IT majors usually cater to all industries, but only offer general IT services to cover as many clients as possible.

Makes Business Operations More Productive And Efficient

Small IT firms use the latest technologies, helping small- and medium-sized enterprises or SMEs and big companies operate more efficiently, faster, and better. These IT firms can help you manage and troubleshoot your CRM software, ERP software, and any business system you’re using in a more personalized way.

Larger IT companies usually struggle to keep up with service levels because of the bulk of clients they need to service, compromising the quality of IT services rendered. Instead of an IT specialist assigned to several clients or companies, small IT firms usually have one dedicated IT specialist for one client. In this way, there’s more focus and prioritization, which is more beneficial for your business.

Here’s how a small IT firm can help you manage your ERP software:

– Resolving ERP system problems can help you better track different business resources, such as raw materials and cash, as well as production capacity, orders, and payroll. 

– Ensure that the data of ERP software or integrated applications are shared seamlessly across different departments, such as accounting, sales, purchasing, and manufacturing. 

– Ensure that ERP systems run on different network configurations and computer hardware using a database without problems.

– Ensure that there’s good software integration. All information is housed in one location because you can integrate an ERP system with your CRM or customer relationship management software.

Affordable IT Services

Small IT firms offer flexible IT services at reasonable prices. That’s why both startup and big businesses can benefit from it. Billing can be per project, per hour, or other flexible payment terms, unlike fixed rates charged by big IT companies whether or not you’ve used their services for a specific period.

Improve Your Sales Metrics

Sales metrics or sales analytics can provide the needed data to measure all sales performance aspects so you can determine and focus on the areas that need improvement. By determining your metrics, your team will likely improve their sales performance to meet their sales goals.

Knowing your sales metrics will help you understand your business sales. It will give you better insight into the status of your sales process. Also, you can create a performance metric depending on the sales activities of your sales reps.

So, how can a small IT firm help you with improving your sales metrics?  Here’s how:

– Monitor the progress of your sales plan’s objective execution by ensuring smooth-running sales apps and business systems.

– Look for areas of IT infrastructure improvement, ensure cybersecurity, and make the necessary adjustments for utmost data security and system protection to reduce or eliminate vulnerabilities.

– Help set up e-learning software to help team members who need coaching or additional support to achieve sales goals.

– Specify your sales pipeline’s weaknesses to increase sales performance by checking business analytics and providing up-to-date data to employees, supervisors, and business executives.

– Ensure that system data are accurate, troubleshooting any system crashes or other IT problems. Also, make your business system running smoothly to provide relevant data, such as lead sources. In this way, you’ll better measure and understand where sales opportunities come from, like online search, customer referrals, or paid advertising.

– An IT specialist can help translate IT data into layman’s terms to help with sales forecasting. Sales forecasting allows you to check the current value of open sales opportunities.

Conclusion

There are many benefits to choosing a boutique IT firm over an IT major. One distinct advantage is the affordability because you’ll only be charged for the services you avail. Also, small IT firms offer more flexible, specialized, and personalized IT services. Furthermore, small IT firms can help improve your sales metrics by ensuring that your sales apps and business systems are in good condition through one IT specialist to one client ratio. By doing so, you’ll gain peace of mind, knowing that all data are up-to-date and secure. 

Ilona

Ilona Kazimirko

Ilona Kazimirko is a former Venture Capitalist and the founder of GreyLoud – a software design and development company with offices in Hong Kong and her home country of the Republic of Belarus. She is an expert in strategic digital transformation and the management of offshore development teams. GreyLoud was recently named a Top 10 Digital Transformation Vendor for 2020 by APAC CIO Outlook

 

 

 

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