Businesses today, especially growing ones, are faced with a range of challenges. This is mainly because as an enterprise begins to scale, new opportunities, as well as problems, start to emerge, which demand out-of-the-box thinking and different solutions. For instance, what used to work a year ago might not be the best approach today.
Unfortunately, more often than not, growing businesses fail because they are not ready to walk the path less taken or adapt and adopt new technologies. Keeping that in mind, here are some of the major technology challenges that are faced by growing businesses.
Choosing the Right Technology
Businesses today are faced with a unique challenge, which is having to choose the best option for their needs from a multitude of technology solutions. In many cases, this is easier said than done, mainly because many of these tech solutions are new and are still going through the traditional trial-and-error phase.
This means that an abundance of choice also comes with an increase in failed implementations, the wrong choice in tools, and irrational decisions. To choose the right technology, business owners need to know the strengths and weaknesses of their business. Assess employee and customer pain points, and then find the right technology to optimize and streamline those processes.
Integrating New Technology and Dealing with the Learning Curve
So, you’ve identified the best technology tools or solutions for your business’s unique needs. You still have to integrate those tools into your business model and day-to-day processes. Oftentimes, introducing new tools and technology to a workforce that’s accustomed to older systems and mindsets can be a difficult process.
While new systems often come with a steep learning curve, business owners and managers also have to deal with unhappy or disgruntled employees who were comfortable working with legacy applications.
In this case, it is up to the business owner to facilitate their workforce in terms of providing them with adequate training to operate these new tools and technologies.
It is no secret that today, IT plays a major role in all functions of business, so it pays for CEOs or managers to have their finger on the pulse on the latest technologies and how they can harness the power of these tech tools to achieve better results. Some important questions that every CEO has to ask are;
- How are we making key technology decisions?
- How are we tracking the results of integrating new technologies?
- Do we have high caliber IT engineers to troubleshoot issues as they arise?
- How many projects failed because IT solutions were non-existent or inadequate?
- What percentage of business decisions are taken with the help of AI and IoT?
- What the duration of integrating new software or applications in our system?
- Is there a learning curve that needs to be addressed immediately regarding an existing IT deployment?
Of course, there are many other questions that a CEO needs to ask when it comes to leveraging IT for better results, but asking these should get you off to a good start.
As a business owner who is positioned to lead a growing company into the future, it is up to you to make sure that every member of your team knows and shares your vision with the same passion as you do and accepts that the only way forward is to adapt to new trends and be quick to adopt new technologies.
