Sunil “Sunny” Desai, professional services manager at Aptronics, delves into the world of technology trends and explains why choosing the right technology partner is essential.

Businesses of today are in the midst of a digital revolution. Any new technologies or trends that can be implemented to help a workforce get the job done easier, faster and smarter is being pushed by media and lapped up by businesses.

While the trends are exciting and have the ability to forge a pathway to success for many organisations, not all technology is necessary and it could become a detriment to your business. Finding the right partner could mean the difference between choosing a technology that is perfectly suited to business needs, and implementing costly solutions to merely keep up with the trends.

 

Discovering the trends

Cloud computing is helping businesses across various industries compete at a higher level. It enables companies to share, store and consume resources like never before, for a lot less too. While it has been deemed the future for businesses, it is important for CTOs or business owners to consider the price of the adoption.

While it’s all fine and well moving everything to the cloud, very few realise the immense cost implications of having to pull this information off the cloud again, for example.

When it comes to technologies that support automation, the benefits are incredible – boosting productivity, reducing costs or getting rid of the need to rely on certain individuals to get a function done.

But what happens when the system breaks and you don’t have a contingency plan in place? Again, this is something that needs to be thought of before the implementation process begins.

Even trends like mobility and big data, which have become buzzwords in and around businesses, need to be looked at extremely closely before a workforce is thrown into the midst of the implementation.

 

A case of adopt or die?

It has become clear that adoption definitely has the ability to create business success, it is equally clear that businesses need to do their homework. Not every business needs to adopt the likes of cloud computing, mobility solutions and automation systems.

If you look at Uber for example, they are an idea technology that requires extreme elasticity and flexibility, making it crucial for them to stay in touch with the trends and consider their options way into the future.

When it comes to businesses that don’t rely on these new age technologies and the benefits they provide, the need to adopt is less important. But how do you know whether to adopt or not?

 

A partnership that counts

There is only so much research a business can do when it comes to adopting new technologies. Sometimes the responsibility needs to be tasked to a partner that specialises in the planning, strategising, implementation and management of these solutions. Choosing the right partner is fundamentally important.

They will be in charge of finding the solution that is best suited to your business, your workforce and your clients. They also have the ability to build contingency plans to keep the lights on even when things go wrong.

The era we are currently in is the most exciting time in all my 30-years working in the technology space. There is so much more you can do and achieve using technology.

My advice to business owners is to look at the options, build a strategy and a concise plan and partner with the right people to bring it all together.

There are far too many people out there who know a little bit about a lot but very few who actually know a lot about something specialised – know the difference.