It’s when
companies get to about 50 employees that they begin to experience the
beginnings of change, including the need for more sophisticated IT systems and
software, and a more consisting IT presence in the company, according to a
study by CDW Corp. released in April (2008).
The study
found that the transition from 50 to 100 employees is a key inflection point. While
companies of less than 50 employees have similar IT capabilities and usage
patterns, crossing that magic divide tends to make a real difference. It’s at
that point, the report notes, that IT mastery becomes an essential driver of
business growth.
“There comes a point where you recognize that the
size and growth of the company means from a technology perspective is starting
to outstrip you, and it’s often at that point—around 50 people—when you start
to think about bringing on an IT manager or establishing an IT department, even
if it’s an IT department of one,” said Lauren McCadney, senior segment manager
for small business at CDW.
That’s exactly what’s happening right now to Winter, Kloman, Moter
& Repp (WKMR), a Milwaukee, Wisc.-based accounting firm that recently
passed that inflection point and is growing at 10 to 20 percent per year.
“When
you’re really small, the precious commodity is money, so from an IT
perspective, companies will tend to put IT things in that are low-cost,” said
IT manager Eric Helmuth. “But when you pass that invisible barrier you don’t
have that much time anymore, but you have more money than you used to have.”
For WKMR,
upgrading technology was as much a change of mindset as anything else. A small company, for
example, tends to buy exactly what’s needed for that point in time. But as
companies grow, the time horizon must move out further and further. “That means
you don’t build the network you need today, but you build the network you will
need in two or three years. It’s a real change in mindset,” he said.
That
dovetails well with the conclusions of the CDW study, which indicated that the
most successful businesses making the transition from small to midsize think
broadly.
“They
understand that what’s important is the information, and they need to be able
to efficiently access information and move it around,” McCadney said. That’s
what drives initiatives like upgraded servers and storage, data protection,
virtualization, and applications like business intelligence and CRM, she added.
Information
underlies everything companies on the growth path undertake, she said. “It’s
not enough to
have data if they can’t access it, analyze it, and get it into a form they can
make sense of so they can make smarter business decisions.”
The CDW study found that for
companies at the cusp of becoming midsized companies, the most important areas
of focus and expansion were business intelligence, data security wireless
technology and better technology management, in the form of server
consolidation, virtualization and data warehousing. Top initiatives included
having a formal business continuity plan, building a data warehouse and using
business intelligence tools, acquiring off-site data storage, and acquiring
industry-specific applications. Other area of interest included support for
mobile computing devices, employing a dedicated IT professional, building a
company-wide IT network, owning and operating a data center, providing remote
network access and improving network capabilities.
The team at WKMR is planning for growth in stages,
first working on infrastructure and server consolidation. One of the company’s
biggest initiatives for 2008, in fact, is reducing the number of physical boxes
it supports. Helmuth plans to accomplish that through virtualization.
“Because
of our industry, we have to retain all previous versions of software we may
have used in the past so that if we have to refer back to a tax return we did
in 2001, we can find the software version we need,” he said. “Historically,
that’s been a challenge the desktop environment that software ran on isn’t what
we have today, so the idea of virtualization means we can retain the virtual version.
That lets us keep a more compatible historical view without polluting our
current environment.”
Disaster
recovery is another area Helmuth plans to bolster. Although the company has
been backing up data and taking it offsite for some time, he said it’s time for
the company to develop a comprehensive disaster recovery plan.
Once the
infrastructure is upgraded, the next step will be implementing a business
intelligence solution—something the CDW study found was very important for
growing companies. Through data mining and analysis, the company will be able
to better analyze data about clients and prospective clients, as well as grow
the service provider aspect of the business, Helmuth said.
As a small
business rapidly becoming a midsized business, Helmuth has this advice for
others in the same shoes: “Don’t wait too long to admit that you’re growing,
and get rid of some
of your preconceptions and habits as you grow. You have to be prepared to do
things differently.”
