Updating Your Business Tech at the Wrong Time Can Be Fatal to Your Success

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2 May 2018. If you want to upgrade the tech in your business then you’ve probably made a good decision. Technology is made to enhance our lives and make things easier, and it extends to our businesses as well. However, you may be wondering if there are some side effects to upgrading your tech, and you’d be right to be cautious about changing the way your business operates.

More often than not, many businesses are taken down not by bad ideas or a poor attention to detail, but by failing to realize just how big of a difference technology can make to their company and its workflow. Far too many companies forget that adopting new strategies, workflows and technologies in the business will ultimately change the way the business works. There have been many companies in the past that were taken down by managers that wanted to change things too quickly or upgrade their practices before the time was right.

(Edgar Oliver, Pexels)

But how do you decide when the time’s right? When’s the perfect time to upgrade your business? When should you take the first step forward?

In this article, we’ll be covering a couple of considerations to keep in mind before you upgrade your business. Specifically, we’ll be covering why updating your business at the wrong time can be a fatal blow to your otherwise successful business. By the end of this article, you should have plenty of additional knowledge that will help you pick the right time to upgrade your business.

Disrupting your workflow is almost never worth the hassle

Many upgrades to your workflow are going to disrupt it and slow it down. For example, if you’re going to add a new machine to your production line, then you’ll need to do it at night or when the machines aren’t running. Then you’ll need to test them and you’ll need to calibrate them correctly so that they fit the production process. If there are any issues, they had better be diagnosed quickly and fixed immediately or else it will just complicate things and cause further issues the next working morning.

Disrupting your workflow like this is almost never worth the trouble. Not only can it be catastrophic should the upgrade not work, but it can also be expensive and cause a lot of misery for the rest of your business.

If you have to disrupt the way you work just to add an improvement or upgrade to your business, then think carefully if it’s worth the time. We’ve probably all seen those businesses and retail stores that close for a week or longer just to add improvements or renovate their store, and many of these upgrades can go horribly wrong. Their customers will likely seek alternatives and they might even lose their core audience.

You never want to disrupt your business for too long when updating business technology. If you absolutely have to, then pick a time that is good for not only you but your customers as well. For instance, if you have yet to release a new product then you can alert your customers that you will be adding upgrades and use downtime between holiday seasons and periods of lower customer activity to perform said upgrades.

By timing the disruption, you can effectively manage any downsides that come with upgrading your technology. Pick an inopportune time, and you could end up losing the majority of your audience to a competitor. If an upgrade is going to change the way you work temporarily, then the end results had better be worth the money, effort and potentially lost business.

Upgrading is expensive–are you sure it’s worth the money?

There are far too many business owners that have attempted to upgrade the technology in their company, only to realize that they’ve stepped far out of their league and wasted money on useless things. For instance, they might decide to upgrade their cloud technologies or network infrastructure to support more users, but they’ll rarely ever use their new systems to the fullest. What they’re trying to do is prepare for business growth, but the capital spent on upgrading these systems could end up costing far too much–more than they should be spending.

Before you spend ludicrous sums of money on business growth (be it technology, hardware or even employees) you should consult your financial advisor. As seen in this article from entrepreneur.com, you’ll want to keep a few things in mind before you hire one. If you Make a huge purchase at the wrong time, then it will spell disaster for your entire company.

(Format, Pexels)

To avoid this, make sure you focus on doing the bare minimum necessary to grow your business. For instance, you don’t want to hire five extra employees to “prepare” for the future. Instead, you want to be giving your current employees a bit of overtime or giving them a little push to do a bit more work during a busy period, and then only hire extra employees when you absolutely cannot handle the load. Similarly, if you need to upgrade equipment or purchase something new, then you can do it in a modular way. A great example of this is the scale equipment you can purchase on 1800scales.com. Instead of buying an entire machine for weighing, you can purchase it in parts, slowly replacing older components with newer ones. This will give you far more value and also be a lot easier to handle financially.

In short, don’t play too far ahead into the future. You’re going to burn your business to the ground if you get ahead of yourself, so make sure you plan properly and seek financial advice no matter how big or small your business is. The worst thing you can do to your company is to lose all of your capital because you thought you were more successful than you were.

Hopefully, this article has given you some insight into why upgrading your business tech can be a bad idea if you don’t time it correctly. Success is hard to achieve and the last thing you want is to throw it out of the window. Time your success properly and give yourself some room to breathe financially, don’t just force all of your capital into growth the moment the money and exposure starts rolling in.

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