5 things I wish I knew before I spent all of this money

There is so much buzz around digital transformation but what does that really mean? Digital Transformation is the new, fast, and frequently changing digital technology that companies use to solve business problems. It is about transforming manual processes into automated workflows.

Unfortunately, just picking the latest and greatest technology to implement is not that simple and will not solve your problem on its own.

Here are 5 things you should know before you spend all of that money:

1. How does your business run?In other words, how do you provide your goods or services to your customers, and what does it take for your business to run smoothly? Some of the things you might want to be thinking about are how is information managed in your organization? What technology is being used to organize that data? If you are using applications such as Microsoft Word, Excel, or saving documents to a local drive, you are likely burning money, and are at risk of losing the original versions of your documents.

2. What are your business requirements?You should make sure that whatever solution you choose is compatible with the rest of your technology. Knowing how your business operates will enable you to choose the best solution to fulfill your business requirements. The reality is that the only person who knows this is your IT team because they are looking at all of your individual systems from a technology standpoint. However, the person who is overseeing the daily business operations is often the person who is determining if there is an opportunity to consolidate systems. Consolidating them can mean stacking them, phasing them out, and/ or finding a new solution that encompasses all of them.

3. Where is everything housed and who can access it? Some of the things you need to be thinking about are where you store your passwords, who has administrative rights (whether your data is stored on the cloud or physical servers — if you still have those), version control, and where your documents are being saved. If you are saving documents to your email or on your desktop, that’s a sure way to lose data. And it’s not just data you need to be thinking about. The backup of personnel; meaning who can easily take on those additional responsibilities seamlessly in the event that someone is out of the office or terminated.

4. Will the product solve your problem?Before selecting a solution, you need to take a step back and define the problem. Only then will you be able to determine if the product or service will present the appropriate solution. Vendors know how to sell their product, but what they will not do is identify and solve your entire business problem. Their goal is to sell you their solution so they will only be concerned with the portion of your business that their solution addresses.

5. Are you equipped to train your team on the new processes and/ or systems? The IT team is focused on things from the back-end and are not going to design a user-experience nor train you. You need to make sure you are not producing old habits with new technology. Great leaders set their teams up for success by ensuring that they have the resources available to effectively deploy the solution and are trained on how to use it.

If you’re going to spend all that time, money, and resources on buying new solutions; why not make sure it’s going to serve you well in the short and long term. A good strategy without proper planning, resources, and goals is going to be an expensive mistake.

Before embarking on this journey consult with an expert who has your best interests in mind and is committed to helping you get to where you want to go.

About the authors:

Cornerstone Paradigm Consultants www.cpcchangeagent.com is a business operations consulting firm whose mission is to transform and grow your business. What we understand is that you can’t be the doctor and the patient at the same time. Your business needs an outsider’s perspective to clearly assess and address your operational challenges.

RCS Professional Services www.rcsprofessional.com is a full-service IT Managed Service Provider offering IT solutions, products, and services to small and medium-sized businesses in the New York Tri-state and Atlanta areas. RCS proactively develops and maintains the individualized IT infrastructure that its client companies need to both sustain their businesses — and grow.