As seen in various trend reports, spending is expected in certain areas like cloud computing, digital innovation, and more. These developments sound exciting, but whether or not your company wants to embark on one of these directions depends on your business goals. Read on to learn how to assess whether emerging technology fits with business plans.
Perform an Information Technology Audit
A good place to begin, when contemplating tech spend for the coming year, is assessing where you are. In cooperation and communication with your trusted technology advisory, CIO or the head of information technology, look at your IT picture–including infrastructure and devices as well as policies and operations. Reviewing all your tech assets can show where more spend might be needed. Are there devices, such as, PCs, Macs, and servers are out of warranty and no longer in compliance? Is there any risk of data loss or compromise, or inability to comply with data protection regulations? And are there legacy systems that could be moved to the cloud, to save operating expenses? Finally, could expanding your consulting budget to work with your technology budget help you start new tech initiatives? These and other questions can show you strong points in your infrastructure as well as any deficiencies.
Examine Trends in Terms of How They Can Help Your Business
For 2024, many businesses are looking at some exciting trends. For example, Artificial Intelligence can help with automation, which in turn can save labor costs. Many companies are hoping to use the cloud for their internal infrastructure as well as customer-facing applications. Taking note of these trends and even being excited about them is significant, but you also need to look at your objectives. Would automation serve your business, and in what way? For example, automation might help your call center workers help customers with more complex problems, leaving simpler questions to a chatbot. Migrating a certain percentage of your internal infrastructure to the cloud can help convert capital expense to operating expense while taking advantage of the scale and security of cloud computing. With constant digital innovation, cybersecurity remains an issue and a key area of expenditure.
Make Your Tech Department a Partner in Spending Decisions
Ideally, your tech department (or even head of IT) will be aligned with overall business objectives. This brings the assurance that IT investments will benefit the business as a whole and provide value (which is not just monetary). Alignment can lead to more effective and efficient IT operations, since unnecessary tasks could be eliminated. Alignment can strengthen the organization to be resilient and flexible in a challenging business environment.
In looking ahead to 2024 and beyond, excitement about new technologies needs to be tempered with consideration of how they support business goals and strategies. For more guidance, please contact your technology advisor today.