---

Your Company’s Technology Refresh Strategy – How often will you replace your company’s technology?

Hello, my name is Brian Largent, and this is another episode of Three Minute Thursday. Today we’re going to talk about your company’s technology refresh strategy. All that is, is how often you’re going to replace your company’s technology.

There’s three basic strategies that companies adopt. The first one is to replace technology when it dies or becomes non-productive. The second one is to replace technology on a set schedule, and the last one is a mixture of the two, some things you replace on a set schedule, and some you replace when they die. Before you can make a decision on which strategy works for you, you first need to understand what the three costs for technology use are.

The first one is the products themselves. The second one is the labor it takes to support the products, and the final one is the lost opportunity cost.

The cost for the products themselves is pretty obvious. It’s what you pay to buy a computer however often you buy them. The second one is labor cost. The longer you keep a computer, or if you decide to use a computer or a device until it dies, you’re going to have higher labor costs, because older devices need more support and maintenance. Lastly, is the lost opportunity cost. Lost opportunity cost is when someone can’t work because their computer is down and they’re not productive. Some companies can recoup that opportunity loss by just doing work after hours or at another time and it doesn’t cost them any additional money. A lot of companies actually can’t absorb that.

For instance, a medical practice. If a doctor can’t see patients, then he’s not going to be productive, and if he’s not productive, he’s lost opportunities that cannot be recouped in any way. He may be able to see the patient later, but that just means he’s not going to be able to see a different patient later.

You really need to weigh your organization and decide do you have a high tolerance for lost opportunity and for labor costs or do you not? I haven’t really told you what you need to do. I didn’t answer that question, but hopefully I’ve got you thinking about how to look at your organization and make a decision on where to put your spending dollars for technology. If you’re deciding that you do not want to have any downtime in your organization, there’s a lot more pieces that go into that, but this is giving you a good rounded understanding of how to think about it.

 If you’d like any assistance in putting together your plan for replacing your computers, getting new systems, or just support in your existing environment, feel free to contact us.