Technology occupies a large position in our lives and businesses, and has changed the way we interact with each other and the world. Digital tools are no longer just about using a mobile phone, laptop, or tablet to exchange information. You also need to make sure that your business is prepared for the future
It’s important to make wise investments in digital transformation. Yet with technology constantly evolving, it can be challenging to know how to best allocate your budget to get a good return on investment and ensure your business grows. How do you know what you should be investing in and how much? What is the competition investing in?
Many businesses find it challenging to find the best application of budget on technology, especially if an immediate return isn’t obvious.
What is digital transformation?
Before we go on, a quick word about digital transformation and what it means. At its core, digital transformation involves change at the organisation level, making your business work smarter, not harder, through modernising your IT infrastructure, and improving business processes, work culture, and customer experience.
Digital transformation can involve cloud adoption, implementing digital tools like artificial intelligence, or revamping operational processes to meet customer needs.
The importance of technology investment
Market requirements and customer demands are changing all the time. It goes almost without saying the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic over the past two years has triggered massive changes around the world and forced businesses to make shifts virtually overnight to remote work.
The impact has been to permanently alter how we do business now and in the future, and inspired businesses to look at how to overhaul their operations and processes and the investments in technology they should make.
It’s also important to consider your market base. Over 50% of the world’s population are under the age of 30 and are digital natives. To appeal to this generation of digitally-minded consumers, your business will have to shift gears and meet their expectations. While your commercial spend may
Post covid lockdowns and restrictions, around 80% of organisations intend to support their employees to continue to work remotely. Many businesses will opt for hybrid work models that allow employees to work remotely some of the time. This implies technology investments will be necessary, as will consideration to how on-premise infrastructure will support these new workplace business models.
Good technology investment can achieve:
- Improve existing processes so your workforce is more efficient, minimising costs and improving productivity.
- Increase your business reach so you are connecting with more leads and creating deeper connections with existing customers.
- Promoting greater connectivity with key partners and supply chain.
- Ensure your company leads rather than follows your competitors.
How to choose where to shift your commercial spend?
Information technology has become critical for most if not all businesses. But for some companies, they’re having to weigh up where to make budget shifts in order to keep operating, and one of those is commercial spending. This refers to costs that belong to sales and marketing.
Things to consider when thinking about shifting your spending focus, is where you are running your business and how this impacts operations. If employees will be shifting to hybrid/remote work models, you may want to downsize and shift from a central business district office premise to satellite offices in suburban areas
Investment in cloud computing and collaboration tools will maintain business productivity and ensure your products and services are still available to customers. This also means you are not limited to running your server in a broom cupboard and hearing the hum in your sleep, or losing sleep because you’re worried about your IT environment crashing.
Reports show the share of IT budget allocated to cloud and managed services will continue to grow, taking away the budget share from software and hardware, as workloads shift away from on-premise data centres. This reiterates the importance of technology budgets being part of a carefully crafted digital transformation strategy and roadmap.
Technology is a tool to leverage greater savings and efficiencies, as well as opening up future opportunities. To discover how your business can shift commercial spend effectively, speak to the digital transformation experts at Linktech Australia and accelerate your goals.