Thought Leaders: Business & Technology Planning Considerations for 2023

If we’ve learned anything over the last few years, it’s that technology has further solidified itself as “essential” for ALL organizations.  Technology can help a business gain efficiency, enhance functionality, drive performance, and contain cost.  But most importantly, IT can mitigate risk for a business.  Do you know what or how to evaluate your technology initiatives based on the potential risk exposed to your organization?  The statistics of a business staying in business after a significant breach are not good.  As we move towards the end of 2022 and look towards corporate goals and initiatives for 2023, here are some questions to ask yourself as you plan and prepare:

• Is technology an enabler for your business or an inhibitor?
• What is your business doing to identify and/or address cybersecurity risk?  Do you have cybersecurity insurance policy?
• Are there any new industry or regulatory compliance requirements you will need to consider in the coming year(s)?
• Do you have documented policies for Disaster Recovery and Incident Response?
• Would you be prepared if you woke up tomorrow and your business had experienced a major security breach?  What would that look like? What would you do?  Who would you call?  What steps would you take?  What are your expectations for working through the process and getting things back to ‘normal’?
• What initiatives are you planning to undertake in 2022 that will help enhance your IT security posture? Why impact will that have?
• Is your workforce able to work remotely in a secure fashion?  Do you have a specific plan for how you will improve that effort this year?  Does your customer know if/when your team is working from home?  Does that impact their experience or your service level?
• How will business/technology growth impact the operation of your organization?
• Are you considering any business application changes in the New Year?  Will you implement those differently?  (On-Premises v. Web-based v. Hosted (SaaS))?  Do you know the pros/cons?  Who is helping you work through that process?
• Do you know what your IT expenditures look like for this calendar year?  Have you already budgeted those and properly prioritized those items?  IT change is challenging – have you communicated that to your company along with the ‘why’?
• How do strategic IT investments fit into your capital and/or operating budget?
• Do you feel good about your overall IT strategy heading into the new year?  Are you working with a managed IT services provider (MSP), internal IT staff or a mixture of both?  Is your MSP well aligned with your business and its goals?  Is the appropriate person in your organization interfacing with the IT efforts for your business?  Are they making well aligned and informed decisions?

We find that most small businesses don’t actively have these conversations throughout the year.  This results in reactive decision-making and lost opportunity to leverage the benefits of intentional IT strategy.  But most concerning is that a business that is not having these discussions is most likely carrying significant risk into their daily operations.  If you feel like you could use some help working through questions and conversations like the ones above, call Connecting Point and we would love to help!