You buy your first home, a tidy one bedroom place. You get married. You start a family. Your family grows and you outgrow the property.
What do you do then? Build a new extension every time a new member arrives? It is more likely you would invest in a new property.
Why is it then that many small businesses do not apply this same rationale to their technological needs, asks Andy Dillon, managing director of Midlands firm VeriLan Technologies.
Growing companies inevitably invest in more staff, larger offices and better equipment - but very few give more than passing thought to their IT needs, he claims.
Mr Dillon says that to many burgeoning businesses, IT can be an irritation, a necessary evil that is bottom of the long list of priorities. When it does get addressed, the approach is often bolt-on solutions to existing overloaded dysfunctional networks.
And he warns that this is costing SMEs in the West Midlands millions each year in lost efficiencies and revenue. Saving money in the short term is false economy when the bigger picture is taken into consideration.
"Early priorities for business start-ups include the purchase of a phone system, computer hardware and software and set up a small network to support the business.
"As the company starts to grow, it may be that another computer or two are added to the network, plus an extra printer, as well as new users. An extra phone line is relatively easy to sort out.
"But there quickly comes a point where communications and IT systems are being stretched beyond what they were intended to do.
"This leads to increased down time, loss of productivity and revenue, increased cost on IT support services and a system that again is been patched to resolve the problem of the day.
"The result is disgruntled staff who don't have the tools to do their job effectively and customers receiving a less-than-satisfactory service.
"The solution? Start again from scratch. It makes good commercial sense to seek advice from an IT consultancy specialist who can advise on specific needs. This may seem very extreme but such a decision will vastly improve productivity, efficiency, employee performance and moral, thus increasing revenue."
