When growing your business, your most precious resource isn't money, it's time. You can't buy yourself more time, which is why you have to make every decision with timing in mind..read more
When assessing any business improvement decision, you have to figure out whether your action plan needs to be put into effect now or whether it can wait. Some companies operate permanently in crisis mode, treating everything as urgent; others apply a more strategic approach and rely on an intuitive sense for timing entry into new markets, for instance, or initiating new product development...read more
Based on recent study, the #1 reason why business leaders struggle with decisions around technology is “Priorities aren’t clear”.
Here’s top 3 symptoms for not having priorities align when struggling with decisions
Waiting for future events or project to make decision: Both business and the technology world become over-complex than ever, making decisions right is also complex, and delaying critical decision(s) because of some future project is natural decision. However, most successful business leaders understand that by adding more time to IT operations, it doesn’t eliminate or reduce soft cost, but it will increase both business risks and soft cost...read more on soft cost
Here’s few items to consider:
- In IT Department, an opportunity cost is always many times higher than status quote. How would your decision lower or increase technology impact on business?
- Business impact or soft cost in payroll/profit margin will only increase by adding more time to delay decision. How will decision control this cost?
Too busy – not enough time to take on business improvements: A common reason leaders take time to deliberate is to collect more data. In some cases, urgent or rushed decisions result when managers rely on opinion or gut instinct. However, in contrast, too much irrelevant information is also cause of delay in decision process. Seeing reliability and meaningful data gives you more confidence and clarity or your decision process...read more on impact
During the busy time in business operations, any interruption in Technology (IT) and business process have much higher impact in cost. An hour interruption during normal business operations will have less impact but consider same hour when so many dependencies on technology and people have to complete their work.
No budget to take on additional cost: Technology cost is usually a small expense compare to other business expenses however impact of technology on payroll and revenue is many times higher. Business and technology process improvements supposed to automate many areas of your business, measure and eliminate negative impact on payroll and revenue. Any small improvement in IT Process will deliver many times higher saving is payroll hours and growth in revenue. If you are struggling with budget to improve your business productivity, consider payroll hours wasted every month and cost of any business risk, it would be many times higher...read more on strategy
Consider following:
- Technology issues or business risks (security, HR, data etc) don’t wait for slow time or your other projects to complete. In contrary, these issues occur during most busy time to cause business interruptions.
- Operational cost for IT is always on-going similar to payroll, you don’t need new budget with only exception if you can eliminate technology soft cost or not for your organization…..read more
- Change like any process improvement seems difficult unless you have detailed plan and proper resources to implement but consider cost of not improving your IT Process or managing business risks...read more
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