Technology is evolving at a swift pace, and it demands both skills and knowledge for you to be aware of the constant changes. In today’s world, it is crucial to keep abreast with the technology to achieve a competitive advantage in your market.
As new technologies emerge, they push the frontiers of what is possible and what is imaginable. A classic example of this is Microsoft’s introduction of a continuous update cycle for Dynamics 365 for Finance & Operations. This evergreen solution enables businesses to benefit immediately from new functionality, no longer having to wait and plan the next time-consuming upgrade. Giving back time to IT and business users to add greater value to their roles.
So, how can you drive your business forward by staying up to date on the latest technological developments?
Let us look at four steps that will help you start your digital transformation journey.
Step #1: Find out what your business needs
- Define an IT strategy that evaluates your technological needs and future-proof your business. This will help you determine the type of technologies your business needs to run efficiently.
- Be proactive at staying aligned with the latest technology trends.
- Ensure that you have a strong IT team to analyse these technologies as you progress in your journey.
Step #2: Evaluate your current scenario
- Once you have defined your IT strategy, it is vital to evaluate your current situation to bring efficiency. Remember that planning is the key to success.
- Look at your existing data to determine the time taken to transform processes.
- Understand whether your existing resources assist you in evolving your business in the right direction? How can you optimise your projects, be more efficient, and save costs? Should you upgrade your technologies?
Step #3: Identify your core business and map responsibilities
- Evaluate and state what your core business is and make informed decisions to invest in technologies that help you realise your business vision.
- For this, you must establish and map roles and responsibilities for your associates. For example, it should be clear who the Change Managers, Release Managers, Service Delivery Managers, Incident Managers, and their responsibilities are. This clarity will help your business achieve the fullest of your technological investments.
Step #4: Use the resources efficiently
- Be agile - prioritise how to use your time and resources optimally through automation. Using technology and automation to improve resource efficiency will add value. If we go back to the above example, where Microsoft’s automatic updates ensure that your applications are up-to-date, we see that automating upgrades help relieve your internal resources from tasks – so they can focus on adding business value.
- Outsourcing - therefore, by outsourcing IT operations and upgrades to skilled experts in the industry, you can reap the full benefits. A robust application management process boosts productivity, controls costs, and helps realise business value. However, as organisations evolve, their frameworks for business also evolve, necessitating them to adopt new IT solutions.
In such a situation, how can organisations achieve operational efficiency when their business-critical applications portfolios get more complicated, maintenance costs rise, and technical expertise becomes further stretched?
Download our latest guide which outlines six paramount principles to implement application management effectively to deliver the business results you’re looking for.
