Go for it! the correct infrastructure for your business + the correct software for your computers = less pain, more gain.

• Author: Williams, Colleen Flood

Your business has computers. It even has a network. You've purchased lots of software. You have an infrastructure that was designed especially for your company ... just five years ago.

Lately, it seems like your competitors still keep pumping new products into the pipeline way ahead of you. You've lost a significant share of sales in your market. Customers are demanding more efficient service. Employee productivity has dropped and technological nightmares have increased.

What you thought was going to be an information technology system that could keep you on the cutting edge of today's technology and provide you with the tools to push you ahead of your competition isn't delivering. It's outdated. Worse yet, it's failing more and more often. Computer crashes are costing you time and money.

Russ Ball, president of Alaska Computer Brokers, cautions, "In today's business climate to keep clients you must provide great customer service. Great customer service demands real time information and the ability to get that information to the right person almost instantaneously. For very small organizations this can be a challenge, but as the organization increases with size and number of transactions, it can become impossible without the correct system infrastructure."

You've started thinking you may have to invest in an all new information technology system. You're faced with a number of questions. Is it really worth your money to invest in new computer equipment? What are the benefits of implementing new IT tools? Which tools do you really need? How can you be sure all your systems will compliment each other?

"There are normally two fundamental reasons a company might invest in new computer equipment," says Scott Thorson, president of Network Business Systems, an Alaska company that has been in business since 1987. "First is to reduce pain; the second is to make a gain. Reducing pain might be something like making customer records available online so employees can quickly come up with the information they need to support customer service. Digging paper records out of a filing cabinet is slow and painful. A company may want to realize a gain by implementing a Web site where they can reach new customers in a way that they have not been able to do in the past."

There are other ways a new system can "reduce pain and realize gain." If employees are unable to make it into work on particularly stormy days during the long Alaska winter months, by accessing...