The past two years have brought unprecedented challenges and subsequent evolution to most businesses’ operations. Significant changes to process, office culture, and budgets were absorbed and tackled in record time. For many it started with a scramble and little warning of the urgent adaptations and investments necessary to stay working. New systems have become the norm, at least as normal as one can expect during what has been an unpredictable ride. With a solid IT roadmap, we can build for the long-term, tackle the difficult IT upgrades we have put off, and evolve for 2022 and beyond.
How would we get to where we are now if we had more time and better planning? A lot has changed in two years. Cloud services have evolved, attitudes toward work-from-anywhere have evolved, and our skillset as an IT provider has widened. Security risks have evolved too.
Would we have sent staff home with their office desktop computer, or made the big push to break free from that on-premises server and get data into SharePoint and OneDrive? Would we have held back on multi-factor authentication because it was just too much change all at once? What about that business application that was just too difficult to move to the cloud?
How an IT roadmap helps business success
Complex decisions and business planning are not easy to undertake in uncertain times, especially when budgets are not laid out with a future pandemic in mind. Your technology decisions should match up with your business goals, and this is the underlying objective a virtual chief information officer (vCIO) works with you to achieve. This is what we refer to as strategic business alignment. As your business goals change, your technology decisions need to continue to be aligned.
An IT roadmap will bring this alignment to life through:
- Strategic business/IT vision
- IT leadership
- Best practices and standards
- Short and long-term planning
- Ongoing business review processes
I am not one for New Year’s resolutions, but I do think this is a suitable time for technology renewal. Work-from-anywhere is here to stay, multi-factor authentication is now a bare-minimum standard and embracing the cloud is critical to the long-term viability of every modern business. It may feel like things have stabilized but there is much left to do if we want to stay ahead. Successful businesses today embrace agility and adaptability as part of their strategic vision.