Technology upgrades are one of the most profound expenses your business can face: your productivity and efficiency hinge on them. Upgrading frequently can protect you from becoming the victim of a hack, so you don’t want to wait until there’s a serious problem before you upgrade your tech. But when is the right time to upgrade so your business remains competitive?
How Often Do You Use an Item?
The first thing to address is how often you use an item. The more your business uses an item, the more often you have to replace it. Even with items that don’t have mechanical parts, such as smartphones that use solid state drive technology, the wear and tear from constant use is a real issue over time. Furthermore, older machines inevitably become neglected by software updates, opening them up to greater potential for hacking and identity theft.
More than your devices slowing down, there’s the fact you use them as much as you do. Replacing a piece of tech you don’t use that often isn’t going to make a big difference—you can put it off. But upgrading technology you use day in and day out is an investment worth making. If you’re using technology for collaboration, planning and efficiency on a daily basis to boost your productivity, replace it sooner rather than later.
Don’t Get Sucked in by Surface Changes
On the other hand, some changes aren’t significant enough to warrant an upgrade. Meaningful changes in technology often take three to four years to happen. So while you might want to replace something before then because it’s become worn out, don’t replace it thinking there may be something more amazing on the horizon—because there probably isn’t.
Evaluate changes objectively, rather than getting sucked in by the new shiny thing. Look at actual metrics. How much more performance will you get from a new device? What are you going to get out of spending the money other than a new coat of paint?
Drilling Down by Device
All that said, there are still some rules of thumb when it comes to how often you ought to change up your tech:
- Computers. Tend to have a maximum lifespan of around five years to really be considered useful. More realistically, you should replace them within three years. It’s good to keep a rotation going so you don’t have to replace them all at once.
- Smartphones. Depending on how much your employees use their smartphones, you might want to replace them annually. A more modest target is around 20 months. If they’re using them rarely, you can go as long as three years without replacing.
- Tablets. These don’t tend to need to be upgraded as often, because new edition tablets tend to be incrementally improved from the previous version. They’re not quite as portable as smartphones, so they tend not to get the same amount of use, unless you’re using them for your retail POS system. When it comes to replacing tablets, prioritize them lower.
When it comes to replacing technology, waiting longer comes with the perk of deferring costs, along with the pitfall of lowered performance and greater vulnerability to hacking. Each new technological purchase should always be evaluated individually, bearing in mind these general rules.