As a business leader, you know the importance of making the right decisions to ensure your organization’s success. But when it comes to technology, one of the most common mistakes companies make is jumping into implementation without fully understanding their current state first. In order to avoid burning through IT budget and making costly mistakes, organizations need to take a proactive approach and understand their business issues by process and technology stack mapping before investing in new software or solutions. In this article we will talk about why this approach will cost you more money than doing the heavy lifting upfront.
When it comes to choosing the right software for your organization, understanding your current state is essential. Process and technology stack mapping helps you identify the root causes of any business issues you may be facing, which can be anything from inefficient processes and systems to outdated technologies or lack of visibility into data. This understanding will help you determine how best to move forward with an effective solution that meets all your needs—without wasting precious IT resources on something that won’t work for you in the long run.
The Mistakes
This may surprise you; the information that makes its way onto these maps should never come from leadership, but rather from the people actually doing the jobs.
Where businesses often make the second mistake is leadership getting too involved with this process or hijacking this process altogether. You must take the good, the bad, and the ugly when conducting this exercise or you’ll never really understand what is going on and why. You’ll find a lot of manual processes, technology that is not stacked, technology that you’ve outgrown or just isn’t serving the business, shadow IT, and gaps in your data to name a few common issues. After uncovering what your current state really looks like then, and only then can you have a conversation about what you need and do not need.
At this point, the business will be equipped with the tools to make a good decision but we’re not there yet. The third mistake is choosing technology because you know the brand, your competitor uses it, or someone who “knows” technology told you to get that one. Collecting business requirements also is a part of the mapping process and necessary in choosing the right software and reengineering your processes. To simplify the concept, business requirements will look at what you need on the front and back end of the business to ensure you have a single source of truth when it pertains to your data.
The effort put into doing the heavy lifting of mapping and collecting business requirements also pays off in other ways. By taking time to fully understand your current state, you can more accurately assess what needs to be done and develop strategies around those findings. This insight helps you create a roadmap for future decisions that are based on data-driven insights rather than assumptions or guesswork. Additionally, this is an all-team effort where you will receive valuable feedback from users that can help guide decisions on future projects or investments. For example, if users feel like they are missing important features or functions, this information can be used when evaluating potential solutions for your organization’s needs.
Ultimately, organizations need to take the time to understand their current state before making any big technology decisions if they want to get the most out of their IT budget and maximize their return on investment in software solutions or upgrades. Process and technology stack mapping along with collecting your business requirements allows businesses leaders to gain valuable insights into their business issues so they can make data-driven decisions. Ultimately this approach will lead you towards greater success. It requires some extra legwork upfront, but it will pay off in the long run!
We understand the complexity of uncovering business issues and the time constraints business leaders face. As process and technology stack mapping experts, we’re here to help you understand what is really going on in your business and solve it once and for all. For more information on this topic or to speak with one of our experts book a consultation today.
