Five signs your business has outgrown its IT setup

The server under the desk worked fine at 10 people. The shared Excel file worked fine at 20. Then the company grew — and 'fine' quietly became the biggest unmanaged risk in the business. Here are the five signs we see most often when a company has outgrown its IT.

1. One person holds everything

Passwords, server access, vendor contacts — all in one head. When that person is on vacation, sick or gone, the business runs blind. If a single resignation letter can stop your operations, that's not IT, that's a hostage situation.

2. Reports disagree with each other

Sales says one number, accounting says another, the warehouse says a third. When systems don't talk to each other, people re-type data by hand — and every re-type is a chance for the numbers to drift.

3. Nobody has tested the backups

Almost everyone has backups. Almost nobody has ever restored from them. A backup you've never restored is a hope, not a plan — and hope is not a disaster-recovery strategy.

What to do first

Don't start with a big migration. Start with an audit: what runs where, who has access, what happens if each piece fails. That one document usually pays for itself the first time something breaks — because now it breaks predictably.