26Point Checklist

The framework · Technology & Future

22 Technology & Digital Infrastructure

12 sub-categories. The three numbers on each are the typical opportunity in that area across businesses — not your result.

Time7.7/10Financial7.7/10Automation8.4/10

These three numbers are researched cross-business benchmarks for the area — the typical opportunity available in it. They are not your score, not a forecast, and not a promise. What is actually critical depends on your business, which is what the audit is for.

22.1

Core business systems

Time9/10Financial8/10Automation8/10
What this is
The systems the business actually runs on — accounting, CRM, operations, communications.
Why it matters
Nine out of ten for time. Core systems determine what is possible everywhere else; a business on the wrong tools pays for it in every process it runs.
You have a problem here if
Critical business information lives in spreadsheets emailed between people.
What to automate
Choose deliberately, then integrate. Fewer, well-connected systems beat more, better ones — most small-business technology pain is integration pain rather than capability pain.
22.2

Software suitability

Time8/10Financial7/10Automation6/10
What this is
Whether the software you have actually fits how the business works.
Why it matters
Poor fit produces workarounds, and workarounds become undocumented process that only one person understands.
You have a problem here if
Staff maintain a spreadsheet alongside the system because the system does not do something.
What to automate
Audit the workarounds — each one is evidence of a fit gap. Change the tool or change the process deliberately, rather than letting a shadow system grow.
22.3

System integrations

Time10/10Financial9/10Automation10/10
What this is
Whether your systems talk to each other automatically.
Why it matters
Ten for time and ten for automation — the highest combined technology score in the framework. Integration is the prerequisite for most other automation, and its absence is the direct cause of duplication and data conflict.
You have a problem here if
The same information is typed into two systems.
What to automate
The highest-return technology work available to most small businesses. Prefer native integrations, then integration platforms, then custom work. Start with the two systems whose disconnection costs the most re-keying.
22.4

Reliability

Time8/10Financial8/10Automation9/10
What this is
Whether the systems the business depends on are available when they are needed.
Why it matters
Downtime stops revenue and support simultaneously. For a small business the cost is rarely modelled until it happens.
You have a problem here if
Outages are discovered by staff or customers rather than by monitoring.
What to automate
Automated uptime monitoring and alerting on every business-critical service. Cheap, quick, and the difference between finding out first and finding out from a customer.
22.5

System performance

Time7/10Financial7/10Automation9/10
What this is
Whether systems are fast enough not to slow the work down.
Why it matters
Slow systems tax every transaction. A few seconds per operation, several hundred times a day, is a real person's worth of time.
You have a problem here if
Staff have learned to work around slow screens.
What to automate
Automated performance monitoring with alerting on degradation. Performance usually decays gradually, so without measurement nobody notices until it is severe.
22.6

Scalability

Time6/10Financial8/10Automation8/10
What this is
Whether the technology can carry substantially more volume without redesign.
Why it matters
Scalability limits show up exactly when growth arrives — the worst possible time to discover them.
You have a problem here if
You know a particular system will not cope at double the volume and have no plan.
What to automate
Automate load and capacity monitoring so the ceiling is visible in advance. The architectural decision to change is human, and it should be made before the ceiling is reached, not after.
22.7

Cybersecurity

Time6/10Financial9/10Automation9/10
What this is
Protection against unauthorised access, data loss and attack.
Why it matters
Nine out of ten financially. Small businesses are targeted precisely because their defences are weak, and a serious incident is frequently terminal rather than merely expensive.
You have a problem here if
Password reuse is common, or multi-factor authentication is not enforced.
What to automate
High automation potential on the essentials: enforced multi-factor authentication, a password manager, automatic patching, endpoint protection, email filtering and access reviews. Do these before anything sophisticated — they cover the overwhelming majority of real incidents.
22.8

Backups/recovery

Time8/10Financial8/10Automation10/10
What this is
Whether you can actually restore data and operations after a failure.
Why it matters
Ten out of ten for automation. A backup that has never been restored is a belief, not a control.
You have a problem here if
You have backups and have never tested restoring one.
What to automate
Automate the backups, and automate the restore test on a schedule. Testing is the part people skip and the part that determines whether the backup was worth anything.
22.9

Technical debt

Time8/10Financial8/10Automation7/10
What this is
The accumulated shortcuts, unsupported versions and fragile workarounds in your systems.
Why it matters
Technical debt is a tax on change. It makes every future improvement slower and more likely to break something.
You have a problem here if
Nobody wants to touch a particular system because it might break.
What to automate
Maintain a register with the risk of each item, and automate detection of unsupported versions and end-of-life software. Paying it down is scheduled work that has to be deliberately funded.
22.10

Software utilisation

Time9/10Financial7/10Automation8/10
What this is
Whether the software you pay for is actually used, and used properly.
Why it matters
Nine out of ten for time. Most businesses pay for capability they never turned on and licences nobody uses — and the unused capability is often what they were about to buy something else for.
You have a problem here if
You are paying for licences for people who have left.
What to automate
Automate a licence and usage audit against the subscription register. This routinely reduces cost and improves capability in the same pass, which is rare.
22.11

Data portability

Time6/10Financial6/10Automation8/10
What this is
Whether you can get your data out in a usable form.
Why it matters
Portability is what preserves your ability to change supplier. Without it, every system decision is permanent by default.
You have a problem here if
You have not checked whether you could export your customer history.
What to automate
Automate regular exports of your critical data into a format you control. Test that an export is actually usable — a locked PDF is not portability.
22.12

Technology costs

Time7/10Financial7/10Automation9/10
What this is
Total spend on technology, and what it returns.
Why it matters
Technology cost accumulates a subscription at a time and is rarely reviewed as a whole. The total frequently surprises the owner.
You have a problem here if
You cannot state annual technology spend without adding it up.
What to automate
Automate a technology spend register from bank and card feeds, with renewal reminders before each auto-renewal. The reminder is what turns a review into an actual decision.

Category totals

Time 92/120 · Financial 92/120 · Automation 101/120. The sum is the official roll-up; the averages above exist so categories of different sizes can be compared.