The only way to ensure growth and longevity is to protect one of your company’s most valuable assets: information. You need a strategic plan to manage information and ensure it consistently aligns with your goals. This is easier said than done for many small businesses that have an IT team of only one or two people.   

To remain competitive, you must prioritize strategic IT initiatives, which can’t be bottom-of-the-bucket tasks that get your team’s leftover attention. You need a chief information officer (CIO) who can provide expert risk management advice and devise a strategy to leverage the latest technology and help you gain a competitive edge in your industry.  

For small businesses who can’t afford the hefty salary of an experienced CIO, a virtual CIO (vCIO) is a cost-effective way to fill the expertise gaps within your organization. A vCIO offers all of the experience and know-how of a CIO, but without any of the cost that goes into paying a CIO’s salary or benefits. 

There are many reasons to bring on a vCIO including: 

1. Strategic Planning 

A vCIO’s top job is to identify operational gaps within your organization and develop a plan to fix them. These can include gaps in information security, compliance, data management and audit and legal preparation.  

These tasks are too important to expect your IT team to complete in between installing new hardware and performing software upgrades. Rather, they’re high-priority jobs that require a great deal of attention to detail. A vCIO will have the experience and bandwidth to make sure you adhere to all government and industry regulations and avoid unnecessary fines that impact on your bottom line.  

2. Disaster Recovery Planning 

A vCIO will help you plan for every worst-case scenario—even those you haven’t even thought of such as: 

• Power outages 

• Computer room flooding 

• Natural disasters 

• Data breaches 

• Total system failures 

The list of possibilities is more extensive than you may be prepared for. A vCIO will help you develop a strategy that makes sense for your organization and helps you recover if disaster strikes.  

3. Business Intelligence 

You know business intelligence and data are the driving force behind growth. But do you have someone who can help you translate that information into action items for your IT team? A vCIO can contextualize intelligence data to help you: 

• Ensure managers know which action items need immediate attention 

• Provide insight into technical gaps in your infrastructure 

• Make operational recommendations 

• Develop and implement data-driven policies and procedures  

A vCIO will help you cut costs and avoid missed opportunities by choosing data visualization and analytics tools that make sense for your business. Contact us today to learn more.