Most people see technology as a blanket solution for all there challenges. They fail to understand that technology is challenge-specific. You have to choose technology that solves a specific problem of yours or help you get over a specific challenge.

It all seems to be very easy, but it isn’t, in the sense that there are different technologies that are advancing like cloud, AI, and data management. All these technologies might appeal to you, but all of them might not be the right fit for you.

Everything depends on your specific requirements.

Any technology you opt for should complement the growth of your business, and shouldn’t be reduced to a new toy in the toolkit. At the end of the day, technology is a facilitator, that should help you focus on your core business.

Getting The Right Technology Partner

So how to get to the right solution, when so many potential solutions are floating around?

A technology partner can certainly help you with this.

Organizations are constantly on the lookout for breakout technologies to build cutting-edge applications, upgrade existing ones, or improve business efficiency.

But how to make the right choice? What is the best way to identify new technologies, to ensure they are compliant with regulations, and most importantly, to make sure they deliver the expected business value?

This is where technology partners can help you, in finding your answers to the above questions. They can help you engage with the wider ecosystem, and opt for technology that encourages co-development and other forms of cooperation so that no breaks are put on innovation.

They can share their industry expertise and technological know-how and provide insights that encourage continuous learning. Together you can address the key challenges of building cutting-edge applications.

Understanding Industry challenges

It’s clear that technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, and the Internet of Things (IoT) are redefining how businesses will operate and innovate in the years to come. The challenge today is to integrate these new technologies in a secure and sustainable.

The digital transformation is disrupting nearly every industry, therefore you need to rethink their business models and customer journeys to stay one step ahead. To do so, have a targeted, sector-based approach when choosing a technology. Here again, technology partners can help you with their diverse, end-to-end business capabilities, including consultation, design, application development, and business analysis.

Focusing on the pain points

Before discovering the right technology, it is important that you understand things that you are doing right and the ones that you are not. You need to learn about your processes and methods that need improvement.

In other words, you need to zero-in on your pain points, and it should be a team effort. You need to bring everyone on board and ask them some questions.

For instance, you can ask questions regarding their efficiency in completing specific tasks, and how it can be enhanced. You can ask questions regarding the communication methods and tools that are being used in your organization. They might need an upgrade.

Just make sure you collect data that reflect company-wide trends and not just focus on one team or individual in particular.

Some more questions that you can ask

When identifying pain points, you can be more explicit in your communication, to get what you are exactly looking for. Once you know the pain points in detail, you can work on the output to input ratio, and figure out the technology to enhance that ratio.

Keeping that in mind, you can consider the following questions:

• How many repetitive tasks your team is involved in, and how much time they spend on them?
• How your growth will impact these repetitive tasks?
• What systems do they already know, and what have they learned so far?
• How often do they rely on something to get their work done?

Again, it’s important to frame this conversation the right way. You are not going to get the answers you need if it seems like you might be looking into downsizing or restructuring, so be explicit about why you’re asking these questions and how honest answers will help your employees get the solutions they need.

Look Closely at Your finance and investment model

Understand the ins and outs of your business model, and based on that, prepare a plan to acquire technology and make money. Essentially, every business wants to grow, but you need to understand the nature of your business. Whether you want to cater to a wide section of users, or you just want to deal with niche clients.

So what you prioritize will decide the kind of technology that will suit you the most. Some solutions will be very scalable, but they might demand additional resource, which might scale up your budget as well.

You may get a solution which is future-ready, improve an area of your business, and fits well in your budget, but it might be disrupting another area of your business.

You may get a solution which is perfect for your business in every way. But it might require a lot of training to seamlessly adopt the technology.

Understand Your Skillset, and See What You are Lacking

The technology you adopt also depends on your technical skills. You can’t overestimate or underestimate the technical skillset of your team, or you will make the wrong call.

You need to assess the level of impact which technology will have on your team, in the adoption process. Therefore, make a fair assessment of the skills which your team already has, and the skills it needs to learn before adapting to new technology.

You can rethink your hiring strategy as well, getting people on board who have worked on different technology before. This will make your decision easier. You will then have more confidence in your team to handle the new technology you are planning to adopt.

If you don’t have the resources to enhance your hiring process, then another cost-effective way is to look for a third-party solution like a technology partner. A good technology partner will help you make the technological shift without any hiccups. It will take care of your day-to-day IT responsibilities.

Hope you liked this write-up. We have been technology partners to fortune 500 companies and helped startups upscale their business. This write-up is based on our experiences only.