Boost your small business with these IT projects

If your business isn’t growing, it’s dying. That’s why it’s vital that you remain on the lookout for new ways to improve your small business. There is one area, though, where small business owners often neglect to look for growth strategies: IT. Yes, you can improve your business’ revenue by investing in IT. Small Business Computing.com provides a roadmap, listing several IT projects to help make your business and employees more efficient and productive.

The power of Wi-Fi

Maybe you allow your employees to use their own tablets or laptops at the office. This doesn’t mean very much, though, if your office doesn’t have a Wi-Fi network. Small Business Computing.com points out that Wi-Fi networks today serve a wide variety of devices, everything from tablets and smartphones to laptops, printers and cameras. If you would like your employees to be as effective as possible, whether they are exploring new business opportunities or sending proposals to potential customers, you need to provide them with access to a reliable Wi-Fi network. This can be a task, of course, that is ideal for your business’ IT department.

Ultrabooks

Your employees can do more when they can tote laptops to meetings with customers. Traditional laptops, though, are too cumbersome. And small Netbooks are often too slow and limited. Ultrabooks, though, are a different story. These laptops are both small and light enough to be portable, and powerful enough to enable staff members to demonstrate multimedia presentations and reports to prospective customers. A good way to see your business grow is to provide your employees more options for snagging new clients. Ultrabooks are one of these options.

No more Windows XP

Windows XP is a solid operating system, especially compared with the universally unloved Vista. But Windows XP’s time has come and gone. Microsoft will no longer offer technical support for the 10-year-old operating system come April of 2014. Plus the company will stop sending security updates for the system then, too. Which means that it’s time to upgrade any machine still running this operating system. Upgrade to Windows 7; it’s one of Microsoft’s more popular operating systems.