Technological advances in the last decade have helped business owners, large and small, improve their productivity, reach more customers and streamline their business operations. Small business owners, in particular, stand to gain the most from the use of technology. For one, they do not have lot of financial muscle. The falling prices of technology can enable them to achieve more with less and be competitive. The power of Internet also enables them to reach customers around the world with minimal effort, which helps them grow their business globally.
Personal Computer (PC) Revolution
Personal computers (PC) have been at the center of technology revolution. It would not be an overstatement to say that PCs have transformed the business unlike any other technology. When you look at their versatility and usefulness one can understand why that is the case. PCs provide freedom and confidence to the small business owners, in turn helping them work from anywhere, anytime and be able to reach their customers and employees at a moment’s notice. The ruggedness of the laptops means that you can carry them anywhere without having to worry about them breaking. The availability of various form factors as explained below can help you find the right one that fits your needs.
The PC by itself would be nothing if not accompanied by the software that provides the brains of the PCs. The advancement in Windows operating system enables you to get the most out of your PCs. The security features built into the operating system means you don’t have to worry about hackers getting into your PCs and stealing sensitive information. Also, the productivity software such as Microsoft Word, Excel and many others from various software vendors lets you get the most out of you PCs. This is how small business owners can achieve the edge I mentioned earlier.
Types of Personal Computers
As I mentioned earlier availability of different form factors for PCs means small business owners can find the right one that meets their needs. Here are details on some of the popular types of PCs and who can benefits from them.
Desktops
These are the workhorses of the business world meeting the everyday needs for small businesses. Their strong performance enables business owners carry out core business tasks they need to perform on everyday basis. Business functions such as inventory tracking and management, accounting, customer relationship, purchasing, sales all can benefit from the use of desktops that enable your back office staff do their job efficiently.
All-in-one PCs
These models combine the screen and the core hardware of the PC into one module. Typically they have large, high resolution screens, which is ideal for the professionals such as graphic designers and content creators. Because they combine multiple modules into a single unit the all-in-one PCs create less clutter allowing the creative types to focus on their work.
Laptops
It would not be an overstatement to say that laptops have allowed business owners to free themselves from the shackles of office and go where their customers are. The thin and light nature of these PCs means business owners can be productive wherever they are. Whether it is to perform their work remotely without having to go to the office or give presentation the customers in their office or even in Starbucks, the laptops can help you get the work done wherever you are.
2 in 1s
These are the latest gadgets that have been developed as a result of the convergence between PCs and mobile devices. They combine the flexibility of mobile devices such as iPads with the powerful features of PCs giving you the best of both worlds and exceptional user experience. They are ideally suited for quick note taking, client meetings or customer service type use cases.
The case for using latest technology
Many small business owners are hesitant to use the advanced technology for the fear of cost or complexity of technology itself. This is misguided and even dangerous. As I will explain later using an old technology can introduce great security risks for your business and harm productivity. Besides, the tax reform introduced by the U.S. government earlier this year provides great incentive to upgrade your technology and introduce the latest PCs and other gadgets to your employees. The tax reform has reduced the corporate tax rate from as high as 35% to 21% providing great savings to small business owners which can be used towards upgrading your technology. The tax reform has also eliminated alternative minimum tax rate. The most important aspect of the tax reform when it comes to upgrading your technology is that it provides 20% deduction for small business owners to upgrade their technology. This is a direct savings that you would not otherwise have.
Risks of not upgrading technology
As I mentioned earlier, using old technology introduces great risks to your business. Below I outline them when you resist technology upgrade and continue using stale technology.
- According to conducted by Intel use of old PCs costs businesses up to $17,000 per year in lost productivity.
- The old PCs take much longer to boot up. According to the same study mentioned above waiting for an old PC to start wastes 11 hours per year. This may not sound like much, but when you combine the lost productivity across all your employees it can result in substantial loss of time and money.
- Old computers are also slow to work with. According to the same study old computers make employees 29% less productive.
- Using old computers introduces great security risk to your business. They are prone to viruses and hackers that take advantage of the loopholes and siphon away confidential business information or customer data putting your business at a great risk.
- You are also likely to get hurt by the loss of support when using old computers. For example, Microsoft has announced that they will stop extended support for Windows 7 operating system by January 14, 2020. This means that computers running Windows 7 will not get any upgrade or support, which will put all the computers running on old operating system at great risk.
Benefits of technology upgrade
While use of old technology puts your business at great risk, upgrading it provides compelling benefits as shown below:
- Use of newer computers provide higher productivity by allowing employees to do up to 2.3x faster multi-tasking (1).
- The newer computers also have the latest 8th generation mobile processors that provide longer battery life.
- You can access cloud based web applications faster with up to 1.9 times faster web performance compared to 5-year old PC (1).
- The newer form factors of today’s computers provide great convenience and flexibility by allowing you to work from anywhere and anytime.
- The most important benefit of upgrading your technology is that it reduces the security risks by stopping hackers from taking advantage of loopholes in your old computers.
As you can see continued use of old computers introduces security risks and results in lost productivity. The latest tax reform in the U.S. provides incentives to small business owners to upgrade their technology. Why would you want to continue to hurt your business when the path to newer technology is so straightforward?
Notes:
New System: Intel® Core™ i5-8250U Processor, PL1=15W TDP, 4C8T, Turbo up to 3.4GHz, Memory: 8GB DDR4-2400, Storage: Intel 600p SSD, Intel UHD Graphics 620, OS: Windows* 10
5-Year-Old System: Intel® Core™ i5-3317U Processor, PL1=15W TDP, 2C4T, Turbo up to 3.6GHz, on Dell* XPS 12, Memory: 8GB DDR3, Storage: SSD, Intel HD Graphics 4000, OS: Windows* 10
Disclaimer: Software and workloads used in performance tests may have been optimized for performance only on Intel microprocessors. Performance tests, such as SYSmark and MobileMark, are measured using specific computer systems, components, software, operations and functions. Any change to any of those factors may cause the results to vary. You should consult other information and performance tests to assist you in fully evaluating your contemplated purchases, including the performance of that product when combined with other products. For more complete information visit www.intel.com/benchmarks. Performance results are based on testing as of October 2018 and may not reflect all publicly available security updates. See configuration disclosure for details. No product can be absolutely secure.
