The tech landscape is constantly changing, and your business needs to keep up to stay competitive. It's not always easy to predict how the tech will change (watch some vintage Star Trek for a quick tutorial on expectations vs. reality). However, early, proactive maintenance with an eye for long-term sustainability can help. This is smart tech acceleration. Essential upgrades will consider the needs of your business over the next 5-10 years, improvements to processes and employee experience, and security and compliance requirements.

Why You Need To Keep Up With Technology

  • Having the correct tools will improve your efficiency and help you make better use of your time. If you're making cookies, you could mix by hand, but it's easier and faster to use a mixer. Just so, you could keep using your laptop from 2007, but a newer machine with a supported OS and more current software will likely improve your user experience and ability to use your time effectively.
  • Your customers are using new tech. You can improve your communication with them if you're also up-to-date.
  • It is possible to improve security by removing obsolete technologies that no longer receive critical security upgrades.

Before you bring new technology solutions and products into your infrastructure, there are a few things you need to consider for tech acceleration to be beneficial in the long run.

How To Start Smart Tech Acceleration

  1. Think long-term. Technology changes quickly. During the early days of the pandemic, many businesses had to pivot quickly to continue providing products and services. Following new regulations and safety guidelines often resulted in short-term tech solutions. As a result, organizations were able, in many cases, to introduce remote work in some capacity and make other changes. However, now that some of the dust has settled, not all of these changes have proven beneficial to businesses long-term. While these technology upgrades helped many SMBs stay in business, they also created integration challenges and issues that needed cumbersome or expensive fixes later. So, now is a good time to transition to a more comprehensive, smart tech acceleration strategy. Any new strategy should consider how your tech implementations will support your business goals for the next 5 to 10 years.
  2. Evaluate previous technology investments. Examine your investments from the previous year (if applicable) to identify deficits. It’s critical to assess whether prior investments have served your long-term vision/goals. Only then will you be able to determine whether your acceleration is on the right track or not. If you're not sure how to evaluate this, a managed services provider like Micro Visions can look at your environment and help you plan upgrades or projects.
  3. Set expectations. Are you keeping up with tech acceleration? If your environment isn’t meeting your expectations, find out what you can do differently to achieve better results. Consider talking to other business owners about their solutions or a managed service provider for advice specific to your environment. You should prioritize cybersecurity, customer experience, employee experience, technology integration across the organization, backups, and compliance.
  4. Consider the costumer and employee experiences. By integrating technology with the employees, customers and users, you can improve the overall experience of people interacting with your organization. Optimizing your technology addresses customer/employee needs to produce better long-term business outcomes.
  5. Committing to integration. Individual solutions that don’t integrate with one another will not serve you in the long run or help you scale. Integrating your systems improves the customer and employee experience, reducing the risk of error, increasing efficiency, and providing the opportunity to automate basic, repetitive tasks.

Collaborate For Success

If your organization doesn’t invest in smart tech acceleration, you could start losing business to your competition. It's time to eliminate short-term fixes that aren't helping you achieve your goals and to upgrade your IT environment. This will help you achieve greater productivity and operational success long-term. An MSP like us can help you find, implement, fine-tune and manage your technology infrastructure. This ensures it’s moving you towards your long-term goals and vision. Feel free to contact us today for a no-obligation consultation to see how we can bring smart tech acceleration to your business.

Additionally, to deep dive into the concept, download our eBook: “Smart Tech Acceleration for SMBs: 5 Ways to Invest Wisely in Technology that Supports Long-Term Organizational Goals” by clicking here.