Rationalizing Your Technology Strategy

As we enter into 2024, the idea of rationalizing your company’s technology strategy is something that should be considered on an annual basis. It’s a good time of the year to assess any new technologies and/or assess maturity of newer technologies that has come of age and how these can impact your technology direction. As you review your technology direction, a few key ideas to keep in mind are: 1. Rationalize your technology investment and how it delivers business differentiation. 2. Assess your near-term technology investments and understand if they move the needle for your business. 3. Assess your long-term roadmap in terms of supporting future business needs. 4. Ensure your technology stack of the future incorporates upcoming technology trends. 5. Evaluate your ability to deliver technology projects to ensure expected business outcomes. Rationalize technology investment and how it delivers business differentiation The starting point is to ask business leaders within your organization on how they assess the impact of technology on their business performance and competitive position. In today’s business world, if technology is not delivering differentiated business results in terms of operational efficiency or driving new business models for revenue growth, you need to take a step back. Take the time to understand why the technology investments are not delivering the business needed results — are the investments focused on the correct technologies? Is there too many investments that are focused on “keeping the lights on”? Whatever the reasoning, this needs to corrected and corrected quickly. Assess your near-term technology investments and understand if they move the needle for your business This assessment is the review of ensuring that your technology investment is focused on both the needed “keep the lights on” investment to ensure that the company doesn’t get into a situation where the technology stack becomes an anchor that prohibits the direction and capabilities needed by your business. The question also needs to take into consideration the technology stance of ensuring the required cloud and DevOps, etc. investments to ensure flexibility and ease of development and growth. Assess your long-term roadmap in terms of supporting future business needs This is the concept of reviewing and assessing that the technology capabilities that are in your future roadmap provided the needed support for the future business capabilities and business models. This may be a good time to take a different perspective and review what other industries are doing in terms of technology capabilities and business revenue models. Taking the “outside – in” approach can provide valuable insight and applicability of different solutions that can be used to enhance your organizations business differentiation within their respective marketplace. Ensure your technology stack of the future incorporates upcoming technology trends The perspective here is to review your upcoming technology investments and ensuring that they are consistent with the technology trends that are seen throughout the global technology footprint. The idea of driving towards these trends provides a substantive background for support and growth in the technology decisions you are making. The idea is to ensure you are not creating a “customized” or “stand alone” technology platform that you and you alone will need to develop and support. These platforms are very difficult to sustain and enhance. Evaluate your ability to deliver technology projects to ensure expected business outcomes The greatest technology plans, roadmaps and investments are only the beginning for success. The additional key is the ability to deliver these technology projects to ensure they deliver the expected outcome. There are many experiences where the technology platform is implemented but the expected business impact is not delivered. This can be caused by a multitude of different things. The key here is to assess the impact of each project to ensure the return on investment has been realized. If not, make the needed edits to deliver the expected outcome. The concept of rationalizing your technology strategy is a critically important business activity and should be performed annually at a minimum, If you’d like to talk about how to do this in an efficient and objective manner give us a call! We can provide our guidance, experience and expertise!