If you want to improve your business’s tech, spend a little more cash on your IT. That’s the popular method of dealing with technical failures for many businesses: Send more funds that way and hope the problem resolves itself.

Although small businesses turn over almost four times as much per employee to IT, evidence suggests they’re not getting the results they hoped for. Many SMBs are still struggling to convert legacy enterprise systems to the cloud or to move from old-school phone systems to more advanced technologies. It turns out, “go big or go home” isn’t the best motto when it comes to infrastructure and equipment spending.

Unseen Ways Outdated Systems Affect Your Bottom Line

In fact, choosing equipment and networks that age well is a lot more important than the size of your budget. Certain products contribute holistic value to your company, which can be viewed as profit when you consider the labor saved by not having to diagnose and maintain older, faulty equipment.

But your tech also says a lot about your company and what you value in a business. For instance, did you know that:

• 91% of customers say outdated tech is enough reason to take their business elsewhere. (Fox Business)
• 4 out of 5 customers refuse to give credit card information to sites perceived as “outdated.” (Small Business Computing)
• The slow manual processes associated with legacy software drains a collective $18 trillion dollars from company coffers each year. (Samanage)

The wrong tech isn’t just wreaking havoc inside your office. It’s also sabotaging your relationship with your clients. That may be harder to calculate than the cost of a new VoIP phone system, but it can certainly impact your earnings.

Practical Advice to Stretch IT Spending

In our ebook Strategic Ways to Increase Efficiency of Your Technology Platform, we take a look at how to get more out of your IT dollars, including:

• How installing a unified communications system through business VoIP can save you money on redundant messaging, conferencing and meeting hosting apps.
• Why professional planned networks affect the speed at which you conduct business.
• The benefits of hiring an all-in-one IT department to oversee vendor communications, IT projects and maintenance, and strategic planning for the future.

We also talk scalability, giving you some quick ways to breathe new life into outdated technology — for example, moving databases from outdated physical servers to the cloud. And we talk about what you can do to position yourself wisely for the future, with a few easy security protections you can implement by yourself.

It’s all here in our latest ebook, so download it now to get the jump on the latest technologies — and get the most bang for your buck!