IITMs lose six hours per week from the business productivity
Small businesses lose more than $24bn per year as nontechnical employees or Involuntary IT managers (IITMs) are given the task to manage the IT solution of companies, according to a new study.
The AMI-Partners small-business study commissioned by Microsoft revealed that the loss represents a direct result of IITMs taking time away from primary business activities.
According to the study, IITMs lose six hours per week, about 300 hours per year, from the business productivity when they are tasked with managing IT operations, and about 30% of survey respondents IITMs felt that IT management is a nuisance.
About Six in 10 surveyed IITMs desired to abridge their firm's technology solutions to lessen the complexity of managing IT day-to-day.
AMI-Partners founder Andy Bose said many small businesses don't have the budget for formal IT support, so they rely on the company's most tech-savvy individual to manage their technology.
"As our research shows, relying on an Involuntary IT Manager can have an adverse impact on small businesses' productivity, which can negatively affect revenue and translates into a very high opportunity cost," Bose said.
"These companies can potentially leverage cloud services to alleviate the need for day-to-day in-house IT support with positive impact on their business productivity."
About 33% of IITMs are projected to shift more IT spending toward hosted or cloud solutions, while 36% revealed interest in a productivity and collaboration suite.
Majority (66%) of IITMs considered security and privacy as high concerns in deploying cloud solutions, while 61% were with reliability, with 53% and 46% concerned about the ability to integrate with existing IT investments and limited features of cloud solutions respectively.
Microsoft SMB Worldwide vice president Thomas Hansen said the cloud when delivered right is a game-changer, providing small businesses with the IT solutions they need to solve their most challenging small-business technology concerns.
"With Microsoft cloud solutions, the job of the Involuntary IT Manager gets a lot easier," Hansen said.