Driving IT innovation has become a massive focus point for IT leaders all over the world. Over 60% of them say their departments are working on fueling innovation in their business. However, time and money are considered to be the biggest impediments, according to a recent CIO report.
If you’re one of those IT leaders, you may find yourself in a tight spot when trying to define innovation. In fact, you may be one of the 87% of CIOs (Chief Information Officer) who feel like the role has become more challenging than in the past.
So, in the following lines, we’ll provide some tips and advice on fueling IT innovation for your business and transforming your job into a more rewarding one.
Start by Defining What You Want to Achieve
As mentioned above, defining innovation is often complicated. So, starting with a clear set of goals in mind can help you and your business better understand what’s the final target.
This type of innovation in an enterprise usually involves taking advantage of technology in new ways. A broad definition would be to create a more efficient organization, where the link between technology initiatives and business goals is greatly improved.
You should focus on IT innovation to:
- Automate existing, time-consuming business processes,
- Develop applications which open new markets,
- Implement desktop virtualization to lower hardware costs.
Take Your Time (and a Team)
Brilliant and spontaneous innovative ideas are maybe the rarest type you’ll ever get. Mostly because you constantly have other important aspects you need to take care of.
So, to drive IT innovation, you should take your time and think it through. For some, it will be impossible. It’s one of the reasons why enterprises assemble teams of ‘risk-takers’ to work on it. They may spend over 20 hours a month focusing on this topic; even more, if the company carves out time devoted exclusively to brainstorming.
To get it right, you’ll have to assess in-depth each technical aspect of your business and IT products.
IT Innovation Is Fueled by the Right Technology
It may sound redundant, but you won’t be able to achieve a certain level of innovation without proper tech in place. If your company uses on-premises hardware, it may be too expensive to even consider such a thing.
Also, just because the most influential CIOs in the world are working hard on IT innovation, it doesn’t mean you must do the same.
However, an increasingly large number of enterprises and even SMBs make the switch to cloud services. Granted, they haven’t yet moved everything to the cloud, but at least half of their applications now reside there.
The cloud gives you numerous benefits which you can’t get with on-premises solutions:
- More flexible – you can adapt faster to shifts in business models;
- Innovative – just like you, the provider is focusing on delivering IT innovation. And many do so, on a regular basis;
- Scalable – the cloud expands together with your company’s growth;
- ‘Friendlier’ – the best cloud services providers have a great customer support which enables you to do the same for your customers.
All in all, the cloud is the right technology which enables you to implement IT innovation in your company, this year. Of course, you’ll need a reliable local network coupled with top-notch security and data backup.
At LEAP Managed IT, we focus on delivering professional IT services and treating our customers as partners by making technology work for them, not against them.
You can learn more about LEAP Managed IT from here, or simply get in touch with us online and ask away any question you might have.
