Smart Tech Spending with Nicole Lefsky

Welcome to the trailer episode of Smart Tech Spending!

This introductory episode features an interview with host, and managed IT services consultant, Nicole Lefsky of Jersey IT Group on the focus of the show.

Highlights of upcoming Smart Tech Spending episodes include:

• How to measure the ROI of technology tools and services
• How to avoid the all too common unplanned expenses
• How to uncover hidden technology costs that are often overlooked

Thanks so much for listening!

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Connect with Nicole
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolelefsky

Transcript

Episode 1 - Smart Tech Spending with Nicole Lefsky of Jersey IT Group

[00:00:00] Nicole Lefsky: My hope is that through offering this opportunity for them to gain this information, they'll walk away with knowledge that will help them drive business growth and profitability.

[00:00:12] Interviewer: You're listening to Smart Tech Spending, a podcast designed to help businesses gauge the success of their technology investments.

If you're looking to overcome the challenge of measuring the ROI of technology tools and services, avoid unplanned expenses and uncover hidden costs. You've come to the right place. Let's get into the episode.

Welcome to the introductory episode of Smart Tech Spending where I'm joined by show host Nicole Lefsky, who is also managing member and co founder of Jersey IT Group.

Thank you so much, Nicole, for being with me today.

Nicole Lefsky: Thank you.

[00:00:50] Interviewer: So before we get into the conversation, it really is exciting because we're getting ready to launch the Smart Tech Spending series, but tell the audience a little bit about you. Can you give us a brief bio?

[00:01:01] Nicole Lefsky: Sure. Well, in 2004, I co founded Jersey IT Group.

So it's just coming on 20 years soon in the next year.  But prior to that, I had a background in business management and marketing and I had owned several businesses. So naturally moving to the tech space was a fun opportunity and a way for me to continue to share a lot of the experience that I had with some of our now clients.

[00:01:31] Interviewer: And it makes sense because clearly that length of time that you've been working in technology, it stands to reason that you would possibly want to start a tech podcast. But let me ask you specifically about how this podcast came to be. Where did it start? Can you lead us on that journey of how we got here today?

[00:01:50] Nicole Lefsky: Sure. With Jersey IT Group, we help businesses by managing and supporting their ongoing technology needs. So naturally in meeting with companies over a period of time, we found that they really lacked a clear understanding of what they were spending on their technology. And with respect to technology, I don't just mean the hardware, but and the software, of course, but all aspects of technology.

[00:02:15] And we would get into conversations with them and they were often confused by all the technical jargon, you know, what we call tech talk. And I really found that in having these conversations with them. I was kind of opening up or shedding light for them on things that they should be thinking about and investments that they should be making and questions that they should be considering when making these investments and the conversations just occurred so frequently, I realized that it's a shame that a lot of business owners and managers and people that are given the responsibility of making decisions around technology who often have another role within their company or are running the company.

[00:02:55] They just really don't have an opportunity to gain that knowledge, independently. And I found that I was really enjoying these conversations and wanted to talk more and more with them. So I developed from these conversations topics that really were common questions that I was asked over almost two decades now.

[00:03:17] My hope is that I can share some of these strategies so that the business community and those making decisions around technology can have a higher level of confidence in the decisions they're making. They can have a clear understanding of what their investment will deliver in terms of the business impact.

[00:03:37] Some of the things that we would discuss that would come up throughout conversation were around what they were spending. There was a lot of confusion on, are they spending too much or not enough? How do they measure the success of their investment in technology? You know, it's very hard to quantify. So what's their ROI.

[00:03:54] They really were unclear about how to evaluate investments, whether they were traditional technology investments or more innovative tools and services. So. My hope is that through offering this opportunity for them to gain this information, they'll walk away with knowledge that will help them drive business growth and profitability.

[00:04:15] Interviewer: We mentioned Jersey IT Group helping to produce this podcast and with your experience with the company, as you said, does anything stick out? With regard to any examples, either from a client perspective or maybe even from your perspective of working with the company where you had those thoughts cemented and said there really is a need for this knowledge to be put out there?

[00:04:37] Nicole Lefsky: Yeah. I think a good example and probably one of the most common questions that we're asked that touches on technology has to do with marketing and a good example is a website. The concept of having a website and the utilization of it and leveraging it has changed over the period of years that we've been in business and we've been approached often by our clients with questions like, "We have to make a change to our website - we don't know who to use." So they'll naturally come to us and they'll ask us for a referral, but we'll get into a deeper conversation, we'll talk about what the website can do for them and how it's no longer a brochure online.

[00:05:17] And from that bit of question and answer turns into a conversation about looking at all the tools that go into digital marketing and where there's opportunity for them to grow their business and how they should be evaluating it. And that conversation, while it's common among myself and many of our existing clients, as well as other businesses that know I'm in the tech field, it's just an example of a form of technology that we personally don't provide as a service in our company in Jersey IT group, but it's technology and it's a discussion point that I find is an example that's commonly not well understood, but business owners and decision makers in I.T. around I.T. I should say for small and medium businesses that we service, they really don't know how to evaluate it.

[00:06:08] They don't know how much they should be paying for it. So that seems to be a common theme. Among many topics using, you know, a website or website revamp as an example.

[00:06:17] Interviewer: So as we're getting ready to launch this series, what can listeners expect? What are you hoping to share?

[00:06:23] Nicole Lefsky: Well they can certainly gain good conversation from thought leaders.

[00:06:29] We hope that they will walk away with proven methods of measuring and quantifying the success of their technology investments. They'll hear unique points of view from other New Jersey business executives on how they evaluate their tech spending and leverage technology as leaders in their industry.

[00:06:46] They'll hopefully gain eye opening questions to ask when they're evaluating new technology tools and services and all facets of their business from day to day operations to things like sales and digital marketing. And finally, I think, you know, they'll learn about technology that could lower their operational costs and avoid things like unplanned expenses, which is really common when businesses venture into new territory when it comes to technology.

[00:07:13] Interviewer: So I know you are very excited to launch this series. Where can people find out more information or maybe can they suggest a segment that you'll be covering on the podcast series? If they have any information or want to reach out, how do they do that?

[00:07:27] Nicole Lefsky: We would love to hear from listeners. If they have topic ideas that they would like more information about, we'd be more than happy to incorporate that into an episode.

[00:07:37] They can reach me at nicole@jerseyitgroup.com or reach out to me directly on LinkedIn.

[00:07:46] Interviewer: Very excited for you, Nicole. I know that you really have your heart in this podcast series. Thanks so much for joining us. We hope to connect with you on another podcast episode soon.

[00:07:56] You've been listening to Smart Tech Spending, hosted by Nicole Lefsky.  Make sure you never miss an episode by subscribing in your favorite podcast player. And if you enjoyed this episode, we'd appreciate it if you'd rate and review the show. 

Thanks for listening.