What twenty-five years of SME IT taught me about buying technology

I started System Solution in 2001. Since then I have supplied, configured, maintained and rescued IT for manufacturers, engineering firms, construction groups and electrical businesses across Gujarat.

That vantage point teaches you something that is difficult to see from inside a single business: the firms that get the most value from their IT spending are almost never the ones spending the most.

They buy for the problem, not the category

A weak purchase starts with a product category — we need a new server, we should look at cloud. A strong one starts with a problem statement: dispatch stops for two hours whenever this system is slow, and it costs us this much.

The first framing invites a vendor to sell you their catalogue. The second forces a conversation about whether the proposed solution actually addresses the problem.

They understand what they are being sold

You do not need to know how a hypervisor works. You do need to know why you are being recommended one, what it replaces, and what happens if you do nothing for another year.

Any supplier who cannot explain that in plain language either does not understand it themselves or is relying on you not asking. Both are reasons to slow down.

They separate advice from supply

This is the uncomfortable one, and I say it having spent two decades on the supply side.

When the person recommending the solution also earns margin on the hardware, the advice is not neutral. That does not make them dishonest — most suppliers I have worked alongside are decent operators. But the incentive is real, and it shapes what gets recommended.

For routine work this matters little. For a significant decision — a major upgrade, a cloud migration, a security programme — an independent read before you commit is usually the cheapest part of the project.

That separation is precisely why I now offer consulting as a distinct practice.