Now that the federal election is over, small to medium-sized businesses (SMEs) in Australia still face the same challenges and opportunities as they were a few weeks ago.
In the election budget, SMEs were the main winners with various initiatives to enhance digital capabilities, improve local skills, and make it easier for SMEs to do business. Many of these programs received support from both sides of the aisle.
While all incentives are important, the motivation for small business technology investment is particularly powerful because it can potentially transform SMEs in the long term.
As digital is increasingly the default method, SMBs will enjoy a 20% tax deduction bonus on expenses that support digital adoption until the end of the next fiscal year.
This gives local SMEs the perfect opportunity to establish themselves and digitize their business. However, to make the most of these incentives, several pitfalls must be avoided, and lessons must be learned from larger companies’ mistakes during their digital journeys.
Avoid the sugar high.
Perhaps the most important thing SMEs can do is have a long-term view of how they want to work. With today’s strategic investments, companies can significantly accelerate the journey to their desired future state.
One thing to consider, especially in cloud computing, is how today’s investments will stack up in three years as budget support evaporates.
Once the decision has been made to move to a cloud model, the following questions for SMBs are: how do we make a move, how long will it take, and can we accurately forecast the budget?
The hyperscale public cloud providers make it easy to move data and applications into their environment but incredibly difficult to move them afterward. This has led to a phenomenon in the business world known as ‘cloud lock-in’.
While it’s impossible to predict your needs for years, you should avoid going “all-in” with a single cloud provider and look for solutions that give you the flexibility to make your own decisions as your needs change.
Find simple scalability
Data grows exponentially. According to IDC, the speed of data-driven interactions will increase twentyfold in the next decade.
Whatever you need today, they’ll be much higher by the time the budget sweetener runs out.
One of the biggest challenges companies face today is wrangling these ever-expanding volumes of data. As more and more customer interactions happen online, unstructured data will only get harder to manage.
With that in mind, SMBs should look for solutions that can easily scale as their business grows.
Value Visibility
There are so many insights just waiting to be discovered in unstructured data. Still, many SMBs lack the visibility to understand what data they have, let alone start analyzing it.
The legacy data infrastructure that many SMBs use today is black holes. Once data comes in, there’s no visibility into where it’s coming from, who’s using it, or even what it is.
To kickstart a digital transformation journey, thinking about how best to use your data is critical. Whether discovering customer insights, automating business processes, or improving internal efficiency, it all starts with understanding your data.
Prioritize security
Ransomware and malicious cyber-attacks are some of the biggest risks businesses face today. According to the Australian Institute of Criminology, cybercrime costs the Australian economy $3.5 billion a year.
All decisions about digital infrastructure must be made with cybersecurity first.
The “crown jewels” of any company these days are data. Without access to data, it is impossible to work.
Unfortunately, many Australian companies have learned this the hard way in recent years, as the outdated infrastructure they relied on didn’t stand a chance against sophisticated attackers.
One of the most fundamental cyber hygiene practices SMBs should adopt is encrypting their data ‘at rest’. Given the small IT teams and limited technology budgets, many small businesses operate a data storage platform that automatically encrypts data can help protect the company from external and internal threats.
Consolidate Skills
Any digital investment is only as good as the people who use it. If employees have to learn a whole new set of skills to manage a new platform – or if it is too complex – all the promised benefits may never be realized.
This is especially true for cloud platforms. Whether it’s AWS, Azure, or Google, each cloud has its quirks and nuances that require significant training to manage effectively.
Nutanix’s recent Enterprise Cloud Index shows that 51% of organizations will use two or more public clouds in the next 12 months.
For SMBs that see the cloud as their future business model, a first step during this period of government generosity should first be to deploy a smaller private cloud that remains under their control.
This gives them the flexibility to choose how and where they operate in the future, and these platforms can also act as a Rosetta Stone between public clouds. Once proficient in managing this platform, the same interface can be used to control another cloud environment.
This year’s federal budget has allowed SMEs to gear up for a digital future. While it may be tempting to rush into investments that meet the immediate needs of the business, the last thing you want to do is make long-term architectural decisions based on short-term budget measures.
