Both the business and technology environment evolve at an incredible pace. Even before Covid-19 struck, organisations were under intense pressure to work faster, adapt to change, and increase their agility. Almost a year into the pandemic, the pressure has only intensified.
Businesses of all sizes and industries have been forced to accelerate digital transformation and the adoption of new technology to stay afloat. The sudden shift to remote working saw demand for mobile devices, collaboration tools and cloud platforms soar, putting the worlds collective reliance on digital connectivity in the spotlight.
And as millions of us continue to work from home, the return to the office on a full-time basis is looking more and more unlikely. Businesses need to ensure they haven’t just simply adopted temporary fixes for what is likely to be permanent cultural change. They must evaluate their IT infrastructure to establish:
- If it truly meets the needs of the business and end-users now, and;
- The level of flexibility and scalability it offers, if (or when) these needs change in the future.
Only then can they create a plan to building a secure, flexible and accessible remote working environment.
However, you cannot arrive at the perfect infrastructure and simply be done. Achieving an effective, resilient and future-proof IT estate is not an end goal, but an ongoing process. A truly agile business is underpinned by agile IT.
You can think of the relationship between your IT and business strategy as a self-feeding loop.
You adapt existing solutions or adopt new technologies to help you reach your goals or overcome a challenge > your business needs and aims change, which alter your IT requirements > the cycle starts again.
Let’s use an example that many businesses will have experienced last March.
A business experiences a spike in the demand for remote working, so they purchase additional equipment to enable users to work from home. They then notice staff are struggling to access their workspaces, so find an IT partner to assist with a desktop virtualisation project.
With a small IT team and an increase in support queries as staff adjust to the new way of working, the business identifies a need to outsource additional technical support. And so, they seek a managed services and support provider to assist while they adapt.
The large-scale shift from face-to-face to virtual collaboration makes the business realise their existing systems or platforms are siloed, making communication across departments difficult. This leads them to look for a way to either integrate their systems, or migrate to a new universal platform…
And so on… and so forth.
It is only by changing and adapting as new needs and challenges surface can a business enable continuity. If you don’t evolve your business’s digital landscape, eventually it will become impossible to move forward.
The 848 group deliver business changing IT solutions that adapt with you and put you on the road to success.
From cost-effective cloud solutions that grow with you, to flexible managed service packages; scalable business applications that improve performance, to virtual desktop solutions for support remote working.
Whatever your goals, we can provide the solutions that meet your business needs today, and keep you agile, resilient, and ready for the future.