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The best rule of thumb judge is do you know the digital entrances and exits of your business, and then do you know what is keeping them safe. This like Multi Factor Authentication is a must these days, but you also need to have your devices managed and updated. You also need to have a trusted platform that holds your data and obeys any regional data rules. Generally if you don't know these off the top of your head, and it isn't something that interests you, then you need to get someone to help that does.
The Gold standard for this is to use virtual machines. This means you can create an online 'laptop' that your overseas staff can log into through their web browser. Then any work they do, any passwords you share with them, basically your business data, can be locked to only being accessed through that virtual machine. This means no chance of data loss, if done right, and flexibility as you can just point the virtual machine at someone else if you move staff around.
This all comes down to what you want the CRM to do. But basics that you should want for all CRM's is email integration, so that when it sends emails on your behalf they come from you, not from the CRM's servers. In this day and age of default spam filters if you don't get that your emails won't be getting to the clients.
Another is to check how the email and file storage work. Some are just an index service and they don't actually save a copy of your emails and files. This isn't always a bad thing, as you can backup your data elsewhere, but if you don't know then you're at risk of misusing it and believing you're safe when you're not.
There are three main drivers behind IT costs being higher than they should. First is doubling up on license costs. A regular example of this is having a Microsoft account and a Dropbox account. Microsoft OneDrive does literally everything Dropbox does and is already in your subscription. You don't need both!
The next is a lack of skills and knowledge. Regular IT training on how your systems work saves so much time in the long run. And also lets you gauge the skill of your team and plan for upskilling when appropriate.
Thirdly is not calling the expert in at the planning stage of a change. To be clear here a product sales representative is not an expert, your IT support is. Someone that knows your IT environment and therefore will be able to help guide you through to any software/hardware purchases that you need. Sometimes they'll point out you already have a tool that can do the job!
Oh the bane of all people with IT, typing your own name in repeatedly. This comes back to knowing your tools, picking your company source of truth and then getting as much automation as possible. Tools like Power Automate all for data saved in one space to be copied across to other areas. If does require the tool you're using to allow for connections to be made, called API's, and it is certainly an expert level task. However once done your clients will love
Now this can often be reduced through sensible alignment, but we're not yet at a point of being able to get rid of this headache entirely.