Business Coaching Tip: Know your technology’s ROI

Do You Own Your Technology, Or Does It Own You?

Remember your company’s first website? It cost a fortune to buy (well into five figures), a fortune to maintain and you built it because it was the latest frontier in marketing.

So, do you know how many clients that website generated for you?

Did it pay for itself in increased sales?

Most business owners cannot answer either question. In reality, your website probably did not come close to giving you a positive ROI. Moreover, as of 2011 many marketers believe websites are obsolete… Technology just keeps changing faster and faster.

However, do you really need the latest and greatest, or do you just think you do?

In my experience working with business owners, as well as 17 years in a Fortune 10 company, many of us think that we MUST have the latest technology…I have lots of friends in the technology industry – maybe a lot less after this article – but as glamorous as technology may seem, it really is just another business resource. So you need to weigh the decisions you make concerning technology the same as you would any other business resource.

If you answer “Yes” to more than 50% of the following statements, it is likely you are wasting time and money that you will never recover while making your business less efficient:

You and your employees upgraded “smart” phones three times in the last five years.

You answer every call that comes in on that “smart phone”– even if you don’t recognize the caller…

You have not renegotiated your company’s phone service plans in the last year.

Everyone in your company has a laptop even if they don’t travel and never take work home.

You just bought the latest CRM and are PAYING to convert all of your data to use it, even though you never fully utilized the last CRM you purchased.

You spend more than an hour on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, combined, each day.

Having spent over five figures on SEO, you are now on your third SEO specialist and are still not above the fold on Google.

You took a course on Quickbooks, or other financial system, so you could be at the same level as your book keeper.

You upgraded to Windows 7 or Apple’s Snow Leopard and all of your business applications to “increase performance”…

You just placed an order for I-Pads for your entire sales force…

Sure, some of this can be deducted or amortized. However, if you can’t definitively answer how a piece of technology is actually helping you, why spend the money at all?  In this economy, if you can’t prove that something is adding to your bottom line, then there’s a good chance that it’s not. And it may be wasting volumes of your time as well.

So, before you type your credit card into that online order form, make sure you KNOW that technology’s ROI.

How can business coaching make a positive impact on your business? Find out how by contacting us at 203.210. 7003 or attending one of our upcoming business growth seminars.