According to a study by Deloitte, businesses spend anything between 2 and 7 percent of their revenues on technology. The biggest spenders are organizations in the banking and securities sector, while construction and manufacturing spend the least. However, regardless of the industry, no modern organization can expect to survive in today’s volatile market if they don’t innovate quickly and constantly.
The last couple of decades have seen many once well-established companies, including household brand names, disappear due to their failure to innovate. Others are a mere shadow of their former selves, long since usurped by more agile competitors that have been able to keep up with rapidly evolving consumer demands. Never has it been clearer that technology needs to stay at the forefront of your entire business strategy.
#1. Cloud vs. on-premises
Cloud computing is one of the most heavily hyped terms of our time, so much so that many business leaders have come to question its credibility. The fact that it’s difficult to separate the hype from the genuine business benefits doesn’t help either. However, there’s no denying that cloud technologies are driving profound change across every industry sector, particularly for small businesses with their relatively limited budgetary constraints.
The cloud greatly increases business agility by doing away with the many physical limitations of in-house IT. By hosting your applications, data, and even entire desktop experiences in the cloud, your business can become location-independent and, in doing so, greatly reduce costs. That’s not to say on-premises IT is dead since there are still some applications that are best off being handled by a high-end workstation. For most everyday business processes, however, the cloud presents the only truly viable solution.
#2. Information security
Digital data has become the most sought-after commodity in the world, and the rising tide of cybercrime and unscrupulous advertising have placed privacy and security at the forefront of our minds. Many legislative bodies around the world have been introducing newer and stricter regulations, such as HITECH, PCI DSS, and GDPR. Never has it been more important that businesses place information security, privacy, and compliance before everything else when it comes to adopting new technology.
Fortunately, information security shouldn’t have to get in the way of innovation. In fact, better security can itself become a competitive advantage and an enabler of innovation. By adopting the principles of security and privacy by design, it’s now possible to shift the perception of information security from a cost burden and necessary evil to a driver of business growth.
#3. Adaptability to change
Most of us have heard the saying that a computer becomes obsolete the moment you take it out of the store. Many organizations are still investing countless thousands on workstations, servers, networking hardware, and other technology only for their entire infrastructures to run into a brick wall later. If your technology ecosystem can’t adapt to change and scale effortlessly with demand, it won’t be long before it becomes a disabler — rather than an enabler — of growth.
There’s a reason why innovative startups are popping up like mushrooms after rain all over the world and, in many cases, usurping well-established competitors. They’re agile, scalable, and quickly adaptive to the constantly changing demands of today’s market. Adaptability comes with either a large budget and a fully equipped in-house IT department or, much more realistically, outsourcing your technology needs to the right vendors.
Simplified IT Consulting provides fully managed technology services for added peace of mind and limitless adaptability to change. Contact us today to schedule your first consultation for free.
