Owners of small IT firms will get help examining their businesses’ performance in a session titled “Blowing up the obstacles holding you back from real business growth” at the SMBiT Professionals National Conference in Melbourne in October 2024.
The event, to take place on October 25 and 26 at the Pullman on the Park, Melbourne, is the annual national gathering of SMBiT Professionals’ small to medium IT business community. It aims to equip members with the skills and knowledge they need to protect their customers and drive business growth.
Spearheading the event is SMBiT Professionals CEO Wayne Small, who will also take part in a panel session at CRN Pipeline 2024 in August about the future of IT community peer groups in helping IT businesspeople deal with the pressures they face in 2024 and beyond.
Speaking about the SMBiT Professionals conference in October, Small said a pre-conference workshop on October 24 will give attendees an opportunity to enlist the help of Pax8 APAC director of Academy James Davis and 360 Consulting CEO Ryan Spillane to take a closer look at how their businesses’ performance.
“If members want, they submit their P&L’s, balance sheets, the relevant data to Ryan and James weeks in advance, along with the problems they've got, and then through the day, they work through a series of frameworks to look at how their business is doing,” Small said.
“The whole class learns from that experience and they walk away at the end of the day with a couple of things they can go back to the office on Monday and go, ‘right, we're fixing this, this and this.’”
Another pre-conference session on October 24, titled "Into the trenches in a real cyberattack," will give attendees an opportunity to take part in a cyber security exercise hosted by Robert Crane, the principal of Sydney IT consultancy CIAOPS.
“[Crane will have] two teams in the room…one’s attacking the other is defending, and he's going to be helping both sides,” Small said. The aim will be to give participants strategies to increase cybersecurity posture and the confidence to tackle challenges in a real-world setting.
Cybersecurity questions for SMB IT firms
Business growth and cybersecurity will be key themes at this year’s SMBiT Professionals National Conference, which will also cover cloud computing, digital transformation and cybersecurity.
“What risks do they present to our customers? What opportunities do they present to our customers and our members?” Small asked. “And how can we leverage the tools to grow solid business; not just because everyone else is doing it, but because it makes sense for the customer’s environment?”
Among those speaking at the conference will be Karl Palachuk, owner of US-based Small Biz Thoughts, which provides training, resource, and community for SMB technology consultants and vendors. He will host sessions about how to make money from cyber, bringing American experience to Australia.
Small said “Many of our members are exploring what can they do in cybersecurity now.”
“Whether even doing cybersecurity is appropriate for them is a good discussion to have too. Because if you're a small two or three-person organisation, do you have the skills to focus seriously on cybersecurity?” he said.
That’s a question we’re asking our members: Should you be doing cyber security? Should you partner with somebody who does do that? Is that a better, safer way for you and your customers?”
AI reality check
Small saw a need for discussion about when it is right to implement AI.
“Businesses are ill-prepared, I think, in some cases,” he said. “The talks were asking for our speakers to bring is around how can we implement things like AI for our customers in a prudent manner that is supportive of their business, but not going to potentially unwittingly violate security tenants.”
The SMBiT Professional community is a potentially useful source of partners for small IT firms that don’t have the security or business application capabilities that might be required.
“We've got some people that know, for instance, SharePoint inside out and back to front, yet they won't handle network setups,” Small explained.
“So, being able to say, ‘Okay, they know SharePoint, I'll ask them to come and help consult with this client, we get SharePoint set up, we put Copilot over the top and then we've got a good safe environment.”
“That's where I'm really encouraging our members in the SMB community to partner with others that they know and trust, and you can't do that online, you need to get to meet them face to face.”
Building on last year’s success
Small said last year’s SMBiT Professionals National Conference was the biggest ever.
“Our members, our sponsors; everybody was raving about the vibe of the event and the information that was being given, the way in which it was shared,” he said. “I'm blown away by the response that we received.”
“We even had one sponsor that was launching their product here in Australia come to our event to launch their product. They went away from that event with a lot of really good leads and good contacts, and they're actually now booming here in Australia because of the launch at our event.”
See more information and register for the 2024 SMBiT Professionals National Conference, which will take place in Melbourne on October 25 and 26, 2024.
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