I have received a fair number of comments on my article about the Technology Gap that exists in most companies, one that grows larger over time, along the lines of: “So, what do we do about this?”
Over the next few days, I am going to share three ideas with you. While none of these is a magic bullet that will resolve your technology issues, they will, at least, help to mitigate the issues. Some companies are more aggressive than others at maintaining their software with new releases, and full replacements when required, but most – perhaps all? – would probably admit to at least some processes that do not work as intended, which require manual intervention, review and resolution by skilled employees, and where the risk of a major error hangs over the organization like a storm cloud on a sunny day.
The first idea is to develop a Strategic Technology Investment plan. Review all your technology platforms with your user groups and sort the applications into several groups:
- Fully meets current business requirements, no updates or changes required.
- Fully meets current business requirements but cannot meet new requirements the users are asking for.
- Meets most current business requirements, but requires some updates – version upgrade, additional functionality to be enabled by the vendor, or needs custom coding to be added.
- Fails to meet current business requirements and requires the use of business-managed workarounds and manual processes to perform required functions.
- Works fairly well, but is built with obsolete code that is difficult, or impossible, to modify.
You can see that as you go down the list, the risk of technology failures impacting your business operations increases. This list forms the basis for a strategic plan to upgrade or replace technology, starting (generally) with the components most likely to fail and with the highest business impact, should that happen.
You may choose not to tackle the highest-risk platform first because – based on my own experience, at least – that platform may be large, complex, and very costly to upgrade or replace. Developing a plan that focuses on smaller initiatives first allows more fixes to occur more quickly and at lower cost, than a “do the worst first” approach. It also allows teams to polish their project skills on these initial projects and so be ready to tackle a major one. And it allows the business to prove that it can employ corporate resources effectively, improving the odds of winning approval for funding for major projects later.
Next, you need to start work on a communications plan and focus on winning support for the Strategic Investment Plan, both within your line of business and across other teams – IT, Audit, Risk, and so on. The goal is to win approval for an annual budget to allow a strategic approach to upgrading or replacing technology on an ongoing basis and sequenced based on an analysis of the best outcomes feasible within whatever budget envelope is awarded.
Spending money to upgrade or replace software that is not technically “broken” may seem counter-intuitive in a profit-driven organization, but long-term profit is likely to be enhanced with an ongoing investment plan to develop, maintain, and upgrade software applications and the supporting infrastructure. As well, these ongoing improvements will help to enhance decision-making processes, improve efficiency, and reduce security vulnerabilities, all of which can avoid costs that would otherwise reduce profitability.
Next time: the benefits of conducting regular software audits.
