SMB technology consulting challenge

In the world of SMBs, technology consultants are an absolute must. For many businesses with less than 30 employees, the thought of having a dedicated IT person on staff is almost viewed as crazy. In most cases there is an employee within these organizations who takes on the unofficial role of IT support and technology expert. This person is often called on to help make decisions, deploy technologies and support users but in most circumstances they also have another full time role in the organization.

This is where the SMB technology consultant plays such a vital role for small businesses. These businesses don't have enough technological complexity to require a full time person but they do use enough technology that they need someone with the requisite knowledge, skills and experience to manage their technology infrastructure. Many SMB technology consultants become "trusted advisors" on all things technology to a group of 2-5 SMBs.

Because these SMBs don't have enough work to keep the consultant busy full time they have to take on multiple clients and this creates its own challenges for the consultants. A couple of these challenges include:

• Geography - SMBs generally don't find themselves located in the downtown core of a city as they seek to keep costs low.
• Sky is falling - technology problems within any organization can have catastrophic consequences but in SMBs there is a magnified view of the impact of technology problems.

SMB consultants not only need to deploy smart technologies for their SMB clients but they need to do so for themselves. Supporting a number of clients that are geographically dispersed and may have critical support requirements could lead to consultants spending all of their time on the road rather than doing the work their clients need.

Deploying a smart technology like Konect can be a tremendous asset to these SMB consultants. Not only can Konect enable their clients' businesses but now the SMB consultant has the capability to do remote diagnostics and remote management of their clients' infrastructure. This type of technology would give the SMB consultant every capability to manage their clients from the comfort of their own home if they should choose to work from there.