Our four-point checklist can help.
learn moreTechnology can be challenging. When you want to remain relevant, but the new tech you’ve just implemented is creating more problems than it solves. The truth is, it might not be the technology at all.
In a bid to stay competitive, organizations are (understandably) turning to more tech-driven business models – but many underestimate just how many issues may crop up along the way. Particularly when you’re integrating that technology into already complex operations.
Whether you’re switching to cloud-based solutions, upgrading your existing tech stack, outsourcing 24/7 monitoring and support, or implementing a brand new program like ServiceNow, it pays to have your planning in place – not least because of the cost involved.
fail to plan, plan to fail
It’s probably something your teachers used to say back in grade school, but there’s real merit in it. As with anything in business, an effective plan – when properly executed – can help you to avoid a great deal of disruption across your entire organization.
For instance, did you know that three out of four companies go to the trouble of moving their applications to the cloud, only to move them back to their own infrastructure? Save yourself the time, effort and (digital) paperwork by making sure your plans to support both old tech and new are fully formed.
Now, onto the tech integration itself. If you’re not seeing the results you’d hoped for, take a look at our diagnostic checklist below.
your four-point diagnostic checklist
1. your costs keep climbing
Cost is one of biggest drivers behind organizations re-evaluating their tech stacks, but while decreasing costs is among the cloud’s most-touted value propositions, this doesn’t always happen. In a lot of cases, a business will transition some of their infrastructure, while the remainder resides in an on-premise environment.
The problem is that partial migrations can effectively double your maintenance costs; they can also create challenges with parity further down the line if you’re trying to balance the types of tools that come with cloud services against your own on-premise services. This type of hidden cost is why actual costs exceed planned costs in roughly three out of four cases.
2. your IT teams are struggling to operate effectively
When you’re trying to integrate and support a balance of old and new technologies, time is of the essence. However, this can seriously stretch the bandwidth of your IT team – ultimately reducing the value of your tech investment.
Think about it: if your most skilled developers and infrastructure leads are simultaneously spearheading your technology transition, handling support tickets, and captaining new projects, they’re going to struggle to operate with the same level of efficiency as before. Before long, reactivity becomes the norm.
3. you don’t have the right people at the center of the change
At the center of every great technology integration project are the people who lead the change, which means you’ve got to think about the skills needed within your teams to make that project a success. But this requires long-term thinking. How will those skills evolve over the next six months? What kind of training will your IT team need to keep critical infrastructure up and running? What kind of knowledge sharing needs to be facilitated?
It's absolutely critical to forward plan the skills you need for any integration project. We’d always recommend partnering with a trusted professional, as this can be an incredibly slow process for enterprises that decide to go with entirely in-house resources for critical technology transitions.
4. you’re only seeing incremental change
Adding new technology to your stack can increase productivity and boost business value. But the pace of that change doesn’t always live up to expectations; this is largely because of the nature of IT resources internally. Because whether you’re a CIO leading a small series of cloud migrations throughout the tenure of your career, or part of an in-house IT team dealing in data center migrations, your exposure will be limited.
Experienced third-party vendors, on the other hand, are constantly at the helm of these things. That level of experience builds sophistication and expertise, but it also means these vendors are far more confident and comfortable when it comes to spearheading change.
how Randstad can help
Our country is at a crossroads: we’ve got high-level tech at our fingertips, but we’re trying to integrate it with traditional approaches that no longer fit.
Elevating your maturity and scale with new technologies has the potential to transform your operations and yield your expected return on investment – but so much hinges on having an actionable roadmap to begin with.
If any of the four challenges outlined above ring true to your organization, you need a plan to resolve them. No matter where you are in your integration journey, Randstad’s professional services experts can help.
Our experience in managing technology transitions is why our clients trust us to advise, partner, and serve as an extension of their IT organization. From IT deployments to strategic planning, our solutions can flex to meet your immediate project needs, as well as serving you for the future.
Get in touch to discover the different ways we’re delivering enterprise value for organizations like yours.