The use of technology has no doubt increased significantly over the last decade or so. However, 2020 saw this adaptation accelerate much faster, urging businesses to alter their strategies to keep up with evolving markets.
Technology leaders also agreed that the pandemic allowed them to redirect their technology investments, considering where their future is headed.
Due to a distribution in the workforce, businesses had to use tools like SharePoint intranet for better collaboration between people in a virtual yet safe environment. Moving forward, firms have to consider shifting their technology investments for efficiency in their workplace.
Read ahead to see how you can recalibrate technology investments and empower your workforce.
Better Budgeting and Planning
Detailed forecasts and planning, customer preferences, and extensive task lists require information gathering, solution development, and testing, extending a project’s time for deployment. However, the way things are going, by the time IT delivers these projects, many of the technologies used to create them are already outdated.
Business conditions change over the years, customer preferences evolve, and demand shifts inundate markets. All these developments make technology vanguards essential to deal with project developments.
These technology vanguards use design, testing, iterative development, and quick prototyping to decrease the time it takes to execute an idea. This also speeds up the gradual delivery of a solution and can help course-correct with the help of customer feedback.
Like other tech-savvy leaders, you can shift your investments, giving more independence to cross-functional teams so that they can deliver maximum value with complete accountability. Furthermore, they are even more involved in course corrections, oversight, and budget reallocation to various competing options.
Joint Possession and Accountability
While previously CIOs and IT Teams were responsible for the failure and success of any technology implementation, now there is joint accountability. With more cross-functional project failure and success and business solutions, the responsibility is shared instead of what it was in functional ownership.
With shared ownership through business teams in every development solution, they share the accountability for delivering solutions and value. Technology and business leaders oversee the investments and their value delivery together.
Outcomes of a project drive the rewards, bonuses, and incentives instead of following deadlines or complying with the budget. In such a case, firms have to develop agility, competencies, and ecosystem partners’ network that can change with demand for effective implementation.
Cloud Investments Deliberation
Owing to the pandemic, the demand for cloud has skyrocketed as research shows its usage increased by 5% in private and public storages.
Firms must already be aware of the significant cost-efficiency cloud adoption gives to them. However, they can only take advantage of it if CIOs oversee cloud usage in their organization and provide real-time insights to manage costs, make value realization, and monitor workloads.
You simply can’t impose a cloud-first approach. Otherwise, it could diminish value, increase costs, and cause orphaned resources, unchecked usage, unnecessary software subscriptions, complex architectures, etc.
Capital Allocation
With the pandemic bringing in significant changes to the business operations, firms saw the importance of resiliency. Technology leaders found themselves cutting their budgets to build robust technology environments, enhancing infrastructure, collaboration tools, and security with the reallocation of their existing investments.
While these defensive investments are essential for any firm, these are fundamental expectations of any business leadership.
Furthermore, business leaders are looking more towards business innovation and more technology investments that focus on the latest business models, revenue sources, and opportunities.
Industry Benchmarks
Usually, companies consider industry benchmarks to calibrate their own technology spending. However, it is not wise to follow these benchmarks to the T because of differences in the industries resulting in different technology budget allocations.
When you are allocating your technology budget, use other companies’ financial reports as guideposts. Even if they have different business strategies and investment profiles, you can still use their data to understand the opportunities available to you.
It is essential to match your firm’s spending with its corporate strategy, technology ambition, and competitive landscape. With proper oversight and continuous monitoring of your technology investments, you can ensure value delivery and reallocation of funds if an asset is underperforming.
Conclusion
The pandemic has shown us the importance of resiliency and adaptability that businesses need to continue functioning in extraordinary circumstances.
It is also important to recalibrate your technology investments by reallocating the budget according to the situation. This is critical for successfully adapting to changes in the workplace and empowering your workers.
Head over to Definity First to find out how we can help you make the most of your technology investments.
