As you have likely realized, the technology
solutions that power your business today aren’t going to be effective forever.
This means that you will at some point need to upgrade this technology - but
this isn’t always as easy as it sounds. Here, we offer a few tips to help you
make it over some of the hurdles that a change to your technology can bring.
One of the biggest mistakes that any
organization can make where their technology is concerned is to start making
changes without having any strategy to support their actions. As can be easily
seen from an outside perspective, this lack of planning has the tendency to
create inflated costs with little return on the investment.
When you are planning for improvements to your technology, you need to have
some kind of strategy in place to avoid these costs. Without taking the time to
create this strategy, you’re apt to add unnecessary technology that - as
mentioned - will pointlessly inflate costs. It is also important that you
remember that improving your business’ technology solutions needs to be an
ongoing process, so part of your strategy needs to prioritize certain
improvements over others.
While it may seem that your company’s
technology would have little to do with its internal culture, the two are very
much intertwined. Let’s face it - changing the technology that your
organization uses can be relatively easy… getting your staff to accept this
change might not be.
Consider what your new technologies may appear
to be to your employees. Even if it is intended to make their jobs easier,
there could be some very real fears among your team that this technology will
make their jobs obsolete (or in other words, unnecessary) and will, in time,
replace them. You need to communicate with your staff, acknowledging that they
may feel this way, and trying to waylay these fears by reinforcing how the new
technology solutions you are implementing are intended to make their jobs
easier. You don’t want your employees to self-sabotage--whether they realize it
or not--in resistance to these changes.
Too often, the operational side and the
information technology side of the same business are looked at as two separate
entities. As a result, the goals of each can often be mismatched, creating
difficulties down the line.
Today’s reality is that business and IT aren’t
two separate entities anymore. However, many business leaders find this
paradigm to be intimidating, as transforming their business and its processes
to accept this shift involves considerable risk. However, those businesses that
involve their employees as they adopt new solutions are generally more
successful, as employees are able to be retrained as new solutions and
processes are introduced.
Data is huge. Huge enough, in fact, that there
are multiple considerations to make as you undergo your next adoption
initiative. First, you need to consider your infrastructure. It needs to be
able to accommodate and scale to a variety of business technologies and tools,
especially those that are on the cutting-edge.
Secondly, you need to make sure that your data
will remain secure. Keeping your data centralized will help to accomplish this,
while retaining the capability to scale your solutions. Penetration testing is
a good way to identify shortcomings in your data security, allowing you to
resolve potential issues before they actualize.
Emerge is here to help with every step of this process - from planning your technology implementations to ensuring that all goes off without a hitch. To find out more about how we can help, reach out to us at 859-746-1030.