Tip of the Week: Overcoming the Hurdles of New Solutions

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.

Are You Running in Blind?

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.

Will Your Company Culture Create Issues?

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.

Are Your Business Goals Aligned with Those of IT?

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.

Are You Prepared to Manage Your Data?

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.

BNMC 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 (978) 482-2020.