Staying ahead of current technology developments is imperative, even for businesses that don’t sell tech products. But is more technology always better? It can actually hurt a business if it isn’t the right time to upgrade. An intelligent and well-thought out technology assessment approach is much more effective.
A professional consultation of your company’s technology is instrumental in positioning your business competitively in the marketplace.
What is a Technology Assessment?
A technology assessment is a detailed inquiry into the way your company uses technology. It’s a holistic approach that aims at understanding just how your business benefits (or doesn’t) from the technology it’s using. The assessment identifies all of your technology assets. It then uses the information to help your business make sound decisions in moving forward.
To this end, it’s important to examine all of the relevant data available. This may include:
- Key processes
- Product or service lifecycles
- Data flow maps
- Customer experiences
- IT maintenance information
Using this information, an effective technology assessment will be able to identify each piece of IT that your company uses. But most of all, it will provide useful insights on efficiency and room for growth.
What Should I Consider for my Technology Assessment Approach?
The main accomplishment of a technology assessment is a deeper understanding of your business. The insights it provides are invaluable. And they will help spot opportunities for savings and for informing capital investment decisions.
Therefore, you want to have a better understanding of the interplay between your business’s operations and the technology it uses. This way, you’ll have the potential to dramatically increase efficiency. And increased efficiency can mean big savings. As a result, this often supplies companies with a competitive edge on the marketplace.
How Does it Accomplish This?
Let’s take a closer look at the things a technology assessment focuses on.
Understanding Systems
The first step in the process is to come to an understanding of every system that makes up your operations process. Taking a comprehensive approach means looking at non-technological systems as well. The more information, the better the assessment.
Another aspect of understanding systems is understanding the relationships between them and identifying dependencies. So, without a thorough understanding of systems and how they fit together, making intelligent IT decisions becomes impossible.
Identify Pain Points and Inefficiencies
You’ve reached the goal of a complete understanding of the systems your company is using and how they relate to each other. And now it’s time to find what’s not working as it should.
Integrating your business and IT processes is hugely important. If these two areas of your business aren’t aligned and running smoothly, your business won’t be operating at peak performance.
Finding pain points is the first step in aligning the realms of IT and business within your company. In this part of the process, the goal is to locate inefficiencies that stem from a lack of integration between systems.
Highlight Opportunities
This is what the technology assessment is really all about. With a thorough understanding of IT and business processes and where to improve, it’s time to look forward.
The end-goal of the technology assessment is finding ways in which you can improve the performance of your business. By the end of the process, you’ll be able to address specific pain points that are holding your company back. In turn, you can then make moves to get ahead.
Technology Maintenance
In addition to assessing your technology needs and opportunities, maintaining the software and hardware your company uses is vital.
It might be time to choose to upgrade or replace hardware or software. In either case, a major deciding factor is the length of warranties and support contracts. If one of these lapses and you aren’t prepared, you can end up in a rough spot.
Security
This is another essential part of IT system health. The scope of effects security has on your business is broad.
Ready to determine the best security solutions for your company and whether current implementations are sufficient? Ask your team a few questions:
Is your software security up-to-date? In addition to installing antivirus software, you need a plan for renewing it when necessary.
Who has access to what data? This is something that can quickly get out of hand if not monitored closely, as exceptions to the rules can happen frequently. Regular check-ups can help keep security tight.
How effective are your backup strategies? Most businesses have valuable data that would be devastating to lose, and no one is free of the potential for disaster. A good technology assessment approach will ensure that your backup strategies protect your data and an easier recovery.
The Importance of Regular Technology Assessments
As with most things in life, follow-through plays a big role in reaping lasting benefits. The rate at which technology develops and the speed at which growing businesses change necessitates frequent adjustments. The only way to truly stay on top of this is to perform technology assessments with regular frequency.
Don’t let change become the enemy. When you remain proactive, changes in your company’s technology can lead to great opportunities. Sometimes the best move you can make is to get the experts on your side.
We Help Lead Your Company into the Future
Contact us here: our team of professionals have decades of experience working in technology executive roles and are well-equipped to coach and mentor leaders across multiple industries. We offer fractional CIO resources and our Surge CIO™ or Gap CIO™ solutions as well.