Technology planning and your organization’s future
In today’s fast-paced business landscape, juggling operations while managing technology is becoming a daunting task. With a whirlwind of business applications promising the sun and the moon, cybersecurity concerns, and the buzz of AI, understanding how your business and operations fit in this landscape is a lot even for the most well managed companies. As the lines between business strategy and technology become blurred beyond recognition, it’s becoming increasingly more important to have some form of a technology plan to stay competitive and relevant.
What is your technology plan?
Having a technology plan for your business goes hand-in-hand with overall strategic business planning. Having your business goals in mind, a sound technology plan will help enable overall business planning by empowering employees to do more, increase productivity, ensure regulatory compliance, and allow your business to take advantage of new opportunities. A technology plan will help answer questions like:
- Do our business processes take advantage of the technology we’re using?
- Have employees and management been trained to use the applications and systems we have?
- Is anything we are doing redundant or a duplication of effort?
- Is management able to access the reporting information they need to make better decisions?
- Are we at risk of a cyber attack?
If you’re unsure how technology is being used in your organization and how it’s helping you achieve your goals, it’s easy to “get stuck” and have a sense of fighting your systems rather than seeing them as an asset. When an organization fails to seek continuous business improvement and technology usage, it’s very common to see them continue to maintain the same time-consuming practices simply because “it’s the way we’ve always done things”. For organizations that find themselves in this situation, their ability to adopt and explore new technologies are very limited as they try to work with what they have.
It’s about more than technology
A technology plan is about more than just the hardware and software your business uses. It’s about ensuring you’ve established a culture that is focused on continual improvement, and a leadership team that is dedicated to looking internally to better understand how things can be done more effectively and allow technology to drive success. Triware’s advisory team has had the privilege to work with management teams in organizations of all sizes across many industries. There is a difference between those businesses that are embracing technology and enabling employees to do more and those that are not. Duplication of effort, manual paper-based processes, data entry, and poor reporting are common themes that haunt many offices when they don’t have a plan. Organizations will often seek to implement new technology without first understanding how it fits into their overall strategic planning, leading to financial loss, unrealized returns on investment, frustration, and stagnation. However, for those organizations that have taken the time to plan and lay the groundwork for new technology adoption, the benefits and ease of their transition allow them to realize a noticeable competitive advantage.
Want to learn more?
Join the Triware advisory team on Thursday, May 9th, at the Gypsy Tea Room for a lunch-and-learn event where we’ll provide insight and tips on how to improve your business operations and get technology working for you. We’ll provide examples and speak with clients who’ve strengthened their operations and have embraced technology to do more. We’ll explore how businesses can best prepare themselves to take advantage of emerging technologies to do more today and excel tomorrow. Contact us today to RSVP!