Why SMBs Need Strategy (Not Just IT Support)

It’s 9:00 am on a Tuesday.  The leadership team just finished their planning meeting.  Prices on slow moving items have been lowered, and a new marketing campaign drops on Wednesday.  Thursday a 30% increase in e-commerce orders is expected.  Spirits are high for a solid weekend of sales.

Fast forward a week.  It’s 8:00 am in the Monday morning stand-up. 

• HR reports overtime was high for the prior week. 

• The shipping department is a full day behind on orders and the labor $ / shipment is climbing.

• Marketing is wondering why e-commerce cancellations and abandoned carts are drastically up.

• The warehouse supervisor is claiming the system quantities no longer match the bin quantities and they need more OT next weekend to ‘perform a physical’ on problem items.

• Accounting is still trying to determine why the E-commerce site’s sales dashboard doesn’t match your financial bookings/sales.

• Overages on small parcel freight through ShipStation will show up next month.

• Employees are frustrated. 

Your MSP?  They did their job.  They hit all their targeted SLAs on tickets plus increased their revenue with ‘emergency support’ tickets over the weekend. 

What happened?

• The increased shipping clerks brought in on Saturday mostly worked ‘offline’ as no additional ShipStation licenses were available to issue. 

• The ‘cost effective’ connector between your E-commerce systems and order processing system runs when somebody pushes the ‘Sync’ button twice a day causing delays between ordering and processing.  It doesn’t handle cancellations.

• Your inventory doesn’t match the system because of phantom and double shipments.  Your order processing system and your process weren’t built to work with multiple teams running pick/pack/ship simultaneously. 

• Your order processing system was slow because it was patching weekend and every machine was downloading updates over the network.

• The single packing list printer experienced 3 jams, ran out of toner and the shipping supervisor had to scramble to buy toner at 2x the normal price.

What is SUPPORT?

Your MSP or Help Desk can order/configure a new printer when you need it.  They can order labels and toner when you run low.  They can unlock your locked account.  Your MSP can tell you the network is slow because patches are being pushed to workstations.  Your MSP can tell you orders only get synched 2x/day manually by Customer Service.   Your MSP can order more licenses when you add users.  Your MSP doesn’t know or care that your order processing system isn’t built for two teams to simultaneously run pick/pack/ship.  They weren’t even aware of your new campaign.  Your MSP is by nature reactive to your business issues.  Your MSP lacks clarity in your business.

What is STRATEGY?

A Fractional CIO struggles to turn on a printer, they aren’t authorized to buy licenses, and most people think they ask too many questions…

A Fractional CIO analyzes how your IT systems map to your business, products, and processes.  They give you clarity into the gaps and work with you to develop a prioritized roadmap to keep you on the trail. 

A Fractional CIO sees issues before they happen, sets a proactive strategy for how IT evolves with your business, and they guide your MSP and your IT decisions to ensure your business can scale and change quickly.

Don’t have a Fractional CIO to keep your business on the trail?

Book a Free Consultation to see how affordable it can be to get an executive leader with 30+ years of IT and ERP experience, 25+ years of IT leadership, and 30+ years in Manufacturing and Distribution.