The Growing Role of Tech in Your Business

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21 Jan. 2019. If your business is like most, then it already has some incorporation of information technology. It’s helping us improve communication, make our core processes more efficient, and manage all sorts of data related to our customers. As the business grows, it’s only likely that its relationship with tech will continue to grow, as well. However, to make sure that tech remains a milestone in business and not a millstone, you have to make sure that you’re ready for the role it’s going to play.

State your purpose

There is a very wide variety of ways that tech can be used in the business. An internal network can be used to help teams collaborate and cooperate more effectively, from working on shared projects to making it easier to send resources from place to place. New software can be purchased to improve productivity and efficiency with the business’s core tasks. Servers can be implemented to help store and analyze large sets of data helping develop insights on the customer.

However, you need to figure out what tech is going to help you with your business goals first and foremost. Stick to one objective at a time, ensuring you have the budget and plan to see it through before you get too ambitious and risk spending more than you can or implementing tech that isn’t utilized as much as you expected it to be.

Lay out your road map

Technology is always changing, and you are likely to want to change it as time goes on. Whether this means a comprehensive change in the way you use it from top-to-bottom or simply scaling up the systems you use now, it pays to be prepared for that eventual change. A technology plan can help you plot out how those changes happen. It’s much like a business plan, looking at potential room for growth and how you’re going to achieve it, only it’s more specifically related to your tech.

With your tech comes a whole new responsibility to handle within the business, as well. An IT team is needed to not only fix errors and problems as they pop up, but to address questions of digital security, and to help you plan the further implementation and growth of new systems. As your reliance on tech grows, your IT team will also grow, and it becomes more likely you will need a leadership figure to serve as the bridge between you and that team. Interim CIO services can help you find the chief information officer that serves as that bridge, helping you see the benefits of having a leader of your IT team. Outsourcing is a cost-effective way to scaling the business until you’re ready to hire your own.

Make sure the team is with you

The most technologically savvy of your team are the most likely to see the benefits of new systems you’re implementing, first. But what about the rest of them? To them, it may pose a risk, introducing new demands to their jobs which they don’t have the skills for. Replacing them can be a lot costlier than simply taking the time to train them. IT skills training courses can help not only ensure your team can keep up with the pace of change but it can also serve as part of their professional development, helping them see the personal growth that can be a huge factor in retaining your employees.

Be aware of the risks

As your reliance on IT grows, it can become a bigger vulnerability and one you have to prepare for. Downtime as a result of power failure, internet failure, or equipment failure is a large one. Having backups for each source of downtime can help you get back on your feet all the sooner. However, the biggest risks are without a doubt data loss and data breaches. Investing in strong digital security for the business is essential. This means not only investing in the enterprise anti-malware software and digital protection services, but also investing the time to teach employees the risk of phishing scams, leaving their devices logged in and unattended, poor password management, and the like.

An effective plan, a purpose, the right team to manage it, thorough education of the rest of the team, and an awareness of the risks are all essential is tech is going to be playing a larger role in the business as it goes along. Don’t look for the tech revolution unless you’re prepared for it.

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