What Are Technology Business Reviews and Why Are They Important?

To be and stay profitable and productive, businesses simply need technology. However, not all technologies can deliver on their promised benefits. That is why Technology Business Reviews (TBRs) are necessary to ensure that your investments are still worthwhile.

KPGM even goes as far as saying that IT needs to employ an operating model that is agile, dynamic, and adaptive to both business needs and market demands in order to deliver at varying speeds and scale.

Stay ahead of the curve with a Technology Success Partner. A good place to start is regular TBRs.

What exactly is a Technology Business Review?

A Technology Business Review identifies your company’s technology’s strengths and flaws. It will also examine your technology stack objectively and make recommendations to assist you to achieve your tech but also business objectives as they cover the following four areas:

✅ Plan: Align your Future Technology Roadmap with your Company Goals.
✅ Budget: Budget your IT Investments wisely to avoid surprises.
✅ Better Use: Leverage technology to execute faster, outperform the competition and increase profits.
✅ Reduced Risk: Continue to reduce your Cybersecurity and Business Risk profiles.

These meetings are about you and your company. Your provider’s past performance is important as it is part of your IT budget but they should not focus the whole time on how they did or why they did it. Instead, you should get a clear and concise overview of what they do for you and your business, so how they deliver their services (average response time, ticket types, ticket volume), how they track against Service Level Agreements and how your utilisation looks like (highest user, most impacted machines, patch and backup statuses).

The next talking points on your agenda are open projects and unresolved issues – the present. Now is a great time to address ongoing issues like the cloud migration that you’ve been waiting for or new user provisioning. Your provider could be waiting on a reply from you as well and have some questions.

Compliance and Risk Analysis

There are many industries in which IT and data management is highly regulated. It is important to recognise the implications of breaching compliance with industry-specific regulations for your business.

They reach from simply paying a penalty fee to losing your license to practice your job. Compliance Management is one of the topics the full risk analysis should entail.

Here are some great questions for you to ask:

✅ Are our most important assets protected?
✅ What risks are they exposed to?
✅ What are the strengths of our security setup?
✅ What additional solutions are we missing?
✅ How does the continuity plan work?
✅ How often do you review it?

This analysis is important because your company’s contingency strategy protects intellectual property, your personal data, and indirectly saves you from embarrassing conversations with your clients and prospects. It has a monetary as well as a reputational value.

Pain Points

So, what else is going on in your business?

Don’t hesitate to move the conversation away from technology. Think about it this way: your IT provider is a business person as well, likely in the same geographical area as you are. There is a good chance that you have lots in common. On top of that, there are more problems that technology can solve than you might know about. Years ago the cloud was this mysterious almost magical place where some people had their data and nobody knew anything about it and now everybody is using it directly (Office 365, Dropbox, Salesforce) or indirectly (Netflix, LinkedIn, BBC). Things change and your technology partner should know about those things.

Here are some great questions for you to think about:

✅ If I could magically wave a magic wand and solve 1 problem completely that I have in my business, what problem would that be?
✅ What technology drives me and my team crazy?
✅ What vendors are causing me pain with support/billing/value for money?

Planning for the Future

Nobody can predict the future but it’s important to have a plan. This applies to the technology you use as much as it applies to the wider business. Technology can do more for you than you might know.

More great questions for you to think about:

✅ What do I want to achieve between now and the next TBR, in the next year, in x years?
✅ How do I bring a specific service to market?
✅ What’s the least / most profitable part of my business and why?
✅ How do I improve this metric?

Technology Roadmap and Budget

The last two sections should lead you smoothly to the roadmap discussion which represents the most important part of your TBR. Your IT Provider will have suggestions based on their ongoing service delivery but make sure that your revised goals find a space in the updated roadmap.

The roadmap’s key goal is to ensure that your provider has a documented plan in place to assist you in better utilising your technology stack to meet your business objectives. This allows for budgeting without hidden costs or unwanted surprises in the future.

Why are Technology Business Reviews so Important?

Reason #1 – Cost Savings

Have you ever wondered if that piece of software that was sold to you ages ago is still doing a great job, and more importantly, delivering the ROI that was promised to you? A TBR is the perfect opportunity to address that concern.

Your Technology Partner will help you to analyse the benefits and compare them to the real operational cost because it’s not only the licensing that needs consideration. Managing and maintaining the same piece of equipment or software can drain your resources.

A great Technology Partner will try to find a cost-effective alternative.

Reason #2 – Increased Productivity

System-wide IT infrastructure analyses reveal which processes are slowing operations down. This enables you to come up with ideas to boost productivity.

Here are some ideas:

✅ SharePoint instead of file sharing via email
✅ Microsoft Bookings instead of endless email chains to determine a suitable date and time
✅ Power BI for analytics instead of endless Excel sheets with Pivot tables
✅ Cloud-hosted VoIP instead of on-prem PBX

Reason #3 –  Enhanced Security

You don’t know what you don’t know. Security is on your IT Provider’s radar but never on yours. That alone is not a bad thing but it’s important to get an idea through Technology Business Reviews of what is out there and how to prevent breaches.

Especially in today’s remote and hybrid work world and a more agile job market, people change jobs and work from anywhere. Identity and access management that reflects your company structure while ensuring maximum security is crucial.

Reason #4 – Technology Built-for-Purpose

Old and outdated technology hinders your business, new but expensive technology might be unnecessary. A TBR allows you to plough the field and learn about what’s out there.

Is your Technology a sitting Duck?

There will no doubt be times where you are going through an extremely busy season and you might not see the value of going through another meeting with your IT provider as they have everything under control. While this is a fair reason to skip one of those sessions, it should not be all the time.

However, if you’re not interested in Technology Business Reviews because your IT provider doesn’t deliver the value that you would expect, you might be paying them a tremendous amount of money for an IT strategy that isn’t fruitful to your business.

If you feel your vendor isn’t delivering the necessary results, give us a call or book a 15-minute video call at a time that suits you. There’s no obligation to buy anything, ever. During this quick chat, however, we can talk about your business’s difficulties and start working on a solution.

 

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