subject: 10 Tips For A Successful Office Move From An It Service Providers Perspective [print this page] Running a small business is filled with big challenges.
In fact, the more your business grows, the more you may find yourself wearing a wide range of hats. With the rapid changes today in information technology (IT), staying abreast of industry trends and knowing how they impact your business can be intimidating.
Does this challenge sound familiar to you?
If it does, you know the stress of managing your IT systems is magnified when it comes to the decisions and logistics involved with moving your business.
As your business grows, you may find that you have to change offices frequently. If you have experienced this with your organizationcongratulations! It means your business is a success.
However, the success of your office move will be impacted heavily by the effective transfer of your information technology to your new location. This is an area of critical importance, and also an area where many small business owners lack experience and confidence.
Based on our experience managing the technology needs of hundreds of small businesses in a wide variety of industries, we have developed recommended practices that will help small businesses conduct a smooth and cost-effective move to a new location.
All of our recommendations are simple. So simple in fact, that most businesses tend to neglect them.
Tip #5: Assign one person to handle all technical aspects of your move
To many business professionals, technology jargon is very difficult to understand, it can even seem intimidating when combined with the stress and headaches that come with moving your office.
The last thing you need during your move is for technology problems to arise that make you feel you are being held hostage by multiple vendors bickering back and forth in their own languagewith none of them making sense to you or taking responsibility for the problem.
Unfortunately, nearly every move has its glitches, so this can easily happen when you have several technology vendors working on various aspects of your move:
Telecom services vendor
Phone system equipment vendor
Network cabling vendor
Network hardware and software vendor
Key application vendor
This is a short list. Depending on your business, there may be even more.
How do you avoid having a list of bickering vendors?
Our recommendation again is simple: Just choose one vendor. And, make sure the one vendor you choose is someone with whom you feel comfortable speaking.
Never rush this process. Speak with more than one person and choose a vendor that speaks in a language you understand. Make sure you like him and that he is someone with whom you communicate easily. Always look for a stand-up vendor who will take responsibility for managing all technology issues related to your move.
Now, choosing one vendor doesnt mean there wont be multiple vendors involved in moving your technologies. However, only one person should be responsible for making sure the final result is what you expect.
We believe the most appropriate person for this role is a senior network engineer with broad skills and project management experience.
