Is Modernizing Your Business Worth The Investment?

“The day that you plant the seed is not the day that you eat the fruit”. This is a mantra that can apply to life, but also your company’s investment in technology. However, is modernizing your business worth the trouble? This is a seed worth planting but understanding the process that allows it to blossom, helps align your expectations with reality.

Technology is an ever-expanding field that presents many opportunities to innovate pre-existing services and create new ones. This compliments the core nature of business, which is to find new and more effective ways to meet your target audience’s needs. To create a mutually beneficially symbiotic relationship between the two, requires a firm understanding of your business’ mission and value statements. As we stated, technology is vast and without scope it can be haphazardly leveraged in an inefficient manner. Understanding your goals will offset the time needed to see desired returns.

You may have heard of the saying: “People lie, numbers don’t”. This highlights the idea that all decisions should be based in fact over opinion. In short, the better-quality information you have available the better decisions you will be able to make. Modernizing your business allows for the mining of that higher quality data that can drive improved decision making. Whether that be adjusting workflows, creating customer personas for marketing, or just managing data more effectively; improving your technical capabilities improves your decision making. Keep in mind that the interpretation of data is vital in this process. Poor interpretation of quality data can lead to ill-advised solutions.  

While technology has seemed to this point as the solution to all our problems, it does have its short comings. The biggest of these short comings being: The large upfront cost associated with getting these systems up and running. Technology can prove to be a very valuable tool and understandably, it is priced as such. This reality is a hard burden to bear for small and start-up businesses. This coupled with the fact that returns are typically seen in long term intervals lessen the appeal of these type of investments. Yet, if you can make it past the initial investment and exercise patience in meeting the break-even point; you can expect to see exponential returns.

There is also a time investment associated with introducing new technology to your processes. When installations occur, it is common to see the inability to perform certain tasks until installs are complete.   Also, users need time to get familiar with the new systems and must achieve mastery before maximum returns can be expected. This learning curve is what drives most from innovating their systems. This transition period needs to have a focus on being user friendly as most will prefer to revert to older inefficient systems if it’s perceived as being easier to navigate day to day. Unforeseen circumstances can cause delays in expected deadlines and require adjustments. Change introduces possible instability while sticking with proven processes can save you from this headache. However, there is no reward without risk and there is a cost to inaction.

There are many pros and cons to modernizing your business, but if you were to ask: “Is it worth it?”. We would have to respond with a resounding yes. As we live in the Information Age it is becoming more apparent that technology is not a competitive advantage, but a baseline. How you leverage that technology in relation to your goals is what creates the true advantage. That is why we stress knowing your goals so that you can maximize the return on your investment. While it may be appealing and presently correct to stick with your proven processes; it would be a mistake to forget to account for process improvements in your plans moving forward. Current methods could prove ineffective in future times.