According to one recent study, the average company spends about 6.9% of its revenue on IT.
But what happens if you're running a small business that is in the process of scaling, during a period when revenue projections are uncertain at best?
If you scale too quickly, you may not have the time needed to keep up with that 6.9% recommendation.
If you scale too slowly, you may have invested more money than you're actually capable of generating at the moment.
These, in a roundabout way, are two of the over-arching challenges that comes with scaling your IT infrastructure for growth.
During this time, IT should be an engine for easy scalability - not something that is holding you back.
By making an effort to understand the challenges, the solutions thankfully become clear - all you need to do is keep a few key things in mind along the way.
By far, one of the biggest challenges that comes with scaling IT as your business continues to grow comes down to the infrastructure bottlenecks that are often created.
There's a reason why a lot of third-party providers charge for their services on a per-user basis, and it isn't just to try to extract as much money as possible out of their clients.
This pricing structure makes a lot of sense because, as traffic and demand on applications increase, so does the strain on your existing IT infrastructure.
With this newfound level of growth comes another major challenge: increasing data management complexity.
More users are creating more data and as data volumes increase, it becomes more difficult to store in a variety of ways.
Especially when you're talking about industries like banking or healthcare, that data needs to be created and stored:
Things are compounded when you start talking about actual compliance with regulations like HIPAA or the GDPR.
All this segues into what is perhaps the biggest challenge that organizations face during this period when it comes to IT: increased costs.
Scaling requires more advanced IT solutions, which can significantly increase operational costs.
You may think that you can come up with workarounds or "make it work with what you have for a bit longer," but that will only exacerbate things before you know it.
Businesses that have outgrown their initial IT infrastructure, often built on legacy systems, may face difficulties in adapting to newer, more flexible solutions.
There may be a new tool that you want to bring into your technology stack to help improve the customer experience, but you can't because it literally cannot communicate with what you already have.
Or, in a healthcare environment, your "workarounds" take so much time to execute that you're eating into a lot of the "benefit" they were supposed to bring in the first place.
Legacy systems can hinder scalability, making it hard to quickly respond to changes in demand.
This in turn forces even straightforward tasks to take far longer than they should, which represents a very real time-related cost - not to mention a major opportunity cost for smaller organizations.
Therefore, managing the balance between spending on necessary upgrades and ensuring cost efficiency is often challenging.
When scaling your organization's IT infrastructure, one of the major solutions you'll want to prioritize involves leveraging cloud computing and virtualization whenever possible.
Virtualization uses cloud computing to replace physical files, putting less of a strain on the physical IT assets you currently have.
It's a complicated concept, but the benefit at the heart is straightforward.
Your infrastructure is essentially delivered on-demand over the Internet via the cloud.
Therefore, you don't need to purchase a faster computer to access those files, applications, or other assets you need.
As long as your Internet connection is fast enough, you and your people have what you need, and you can delay those costly physical upgrades a bit longer.
But this is especially important when it comes to not just enabling your ability to scale, but supporting the often unpredictable nature of this period.
Cloud platforms like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud provide on-demand resources, meaning businesses can quickly scale up or down based on demand, without the need to invest in physical hardware.
It doesn't matter if you suddenly bring in 50 new users, only to reduce your need by 25 a few months later.
Cloud computing and virtualization can support your needs as they exist right now, all without the hassle you're likely used to dealing with.
Of course, once you begin scaling IT infrastructure processes, you need to prioritize implementing scalable network and storage solutions in the first place.
Your organization is going to add these assets whether you're in the process of rapid expansion or not.
Therefore, you need to make scalability a required feature as you evaluate any option to invest in for the near future.
Scalable storage solutions like network-attached storage (also called NAS for short) and object storage allow businesses to add storage capacity without disruption, ensuring data is always accessible and secure as the business grows.
Software-defined networking, otherwise known as SDN for short, can also allow an organization to manage its network resources dynamically.
Again - it's all about giving you the same level of control you expect over the design and capabilities of your network without requiring you to make any major physical modifications in the process.
Software-defined networking enables IT teams to adjust network capacity quickly to meet increasing traffic demands.
This can be a particularly great way for businesses to not only scale, but to do so while also taking into consideration things like seasonal fluctuations in productivity requirements.
All this segues nicely into what is perhaps the most essential solution for a scalable IT infrastructure: making sure that your infrastructure supports not only your current status but future growth as well.
Remember that you're not just focused on solving immediate challenges - or at least, you shouldn't be.
You also need to future-proof your infrastructure.
Regardless of what life happens to throw at you six months or even two years from now, you need to be ready for it.
Challenges like those outlined above are not ones you want to go through on a regular basis when you're also trying to innovate on behalf of your customers.
Putting things together by way of a modular infrastructure is one of the many ways that you can do that.
Implementing modular systems that can be easily upgraded or expanded without disrupting operations.
This allows businesses to adapt to future growth by adding more resources as needed.
These days, you've also no doubt heard a lot about not only automation, but the implementation of artificial intelligence as well.
In this context, these AI-driven tools aren't about replacing your human IT employees - it's about supporting and empowering them.
Leveraging automation tools to manage tasks like system monitoring, updates, and backups helps reduce the administrative overhead of scaling IT.
Those human IT workers are free to focus more on tasks that truly need them, while still being able to act confidently knowing that essential tasks like backups are being taken care of.
Additionally, AI and machine learning can help businesses optimize resource allocation and predict future IT needs.
One of the biggest lessons to be learned about scaling successfully involves the need to do so intelligently.
In other words, it isn't just about adding as many resources as possible.
It would be wonderful to meticulously plan ahead for every possible scenario you might face, guaranteeing that you're ready.
In reality, this will likely just lead to an over-provisioning of IT resources that will waste time and money that could be better used elsewhere.
This is why assets like a cloud infrastructure and scaling tools are critical.
Especially in industries like banking and healthcare, you also need to make sure you're focusing on security and compliance whenever possible.
With scale comes complexity, and businesses must not let their security and compliance practices slip.
Regular audits, security training, and adopting best practices for data encryption and access control are crucial.
Managed service providers, also commonly referred to as MSPs, will be a pivotal tool to lean on during this period - especially for smaller organizations that might not be able to account for all these variables themselves.
MSPs provide not only specialized knowledge, but industry-specific experience when it comes to designing and implementing the scalable IT infrastructure you need.
They often have existing relationships with cloud-based providers and can offer managed cloud services for you to take advantage of, and they can guarantee things like proactive monitoring for security and compliance so these are things you don't have to worry about.
Any one of these benefits on their own would likely be enough to warrant the relationship with an MSP during this critical time for your business.
Together, they help organizations like yours stay ahead of scalability challenges and ensures that IT infrastructure is always performing at its best.
In the end, there are two essential ideas to remember when scaling IT infrastructure that will serve you well moving forward.
The first is that this isn't a process you can take lightly. It's not simply about "adding resources."
It's about balancing the performance you need with the scalability you demand at a cost you can afford.
Because of that, the decisions you make will need to be purpose-driven.
You can't add IT assets simply because you think you're supposed to, or because they represent the "latest and greatest" that modern technology has to offer.
You need to embrace them because it's the right thing to do at exactly the right moment.
The second is that true IT scalability isn't something that you'll be able to achieve overnight - especially in areas like banking and healthcare.
Leveraging cloud computing and virtualization successfully requires you to build upon the progress you've already made.
The same is true of implementing scalable network and storage solutions.
None of this is as simple as flipping a light switch.
But soon one strategic acquisition becomes two, becomes four - and suddenly you're on your way to true IT scalability.
MSPs can be an enormous help to this end, providing scalable IT solutions that are tailored to your exact needs.
But you can't just find a partner with "experience" in a general sense.
You need to find one with the industry-specific experience needed to help you overcome many common IT growth challenges.
All this is to say that you need to plan strategically for growth if you actually want to bring that vision of a more prosperous future to life.
Never forget that growing too rapidly is sometimes just as devastating to a business as not growing at all.
Think about the type of organization you want to be running in five years and work your way backward to the present, making a note of the actionable, achievable steps you need to take along the way to connect those two points.
Then, think of your IT infrastructure as a way to support you and your people along this journey.
It cannot be an afterthought - it needs to be baked into the strategy itself for the best results moving forward.
If you'd like to find out more information about scaling your IT infrastructure for growth in an industry like banking or healthcare, or if you have any additional questions that you'd like to go over with someone in a bit more detail, please don't hesitate to contact us today.
