Technology is defined by its ever-changing nature but if you’re in business change can be costly, genuinely costly. It’s not just large corporates that find change difficult, ever business does for a variety of reasons. An SME might suffer from a lack of cash or resources, larger companies from the sheer scale of issues around implementing change and the inertia inherent in altering the trajectory of a large organisation.
Therefore the barriers to change are different for ever business at every point in its growth journey. What never alters is that successful change management is vital to an organisation’s continued survival and success.
Time & Cost
One of the most common barriers to change in any organisation is the mindset that “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” If that’s true then there is no reason to change anything but whether it’s tooling in a production environment or software in the back office that statement cannot be true forever. So firstly consider how often you review your systems and remember that at some point a system or piece of equipment will break – ensure you have a plan in place.
In the first sentence of this piece I said that tech is defined by change. Change is good, change gives us faster, better, more capable tech – but it also makes existing tech obsolete, and suppliers of hardware and software don’t like supporting old-tech. It’s costly and fundamentally unprofitable, even if as in the case of some software companies they offer support for old tech at eye-watering prices.
There are a lot of costs associated with migrating to new technologies, genuine barriers to change. Let’s talk about tech specifically where you already made a huge investment in:
- Hardware
- Software
- Training
- Designing workflows & Quality Systems
All good points, though with caveats.
Hardware gets old and fails, suppliers stop producing spares, eventually something breaks and you can’t replace it. More often than not new software from operating systems to applications simply will not run on your venerable old kit.
Software changes all the time, Meta for example release software several times each day in a process of continual release. Even OS suppliers like Microsoft drop support for older hardware as they seek to add new features and entice new users to upgrade … which often will necessitate new hardware … and new application software. I’m old enough to remember the debates when the IBM PC first appeared about “Should businesses stay with CP/M (8 bit 8080/Z80) or go for the fancy new PC-DOS (MS-DOS 16 bit 8088/86)?” It would seem quant now because of the ubiquity of Windows and Linux but hang on, are you considering going into the cloud using AWS, Azure or Google?
Adopting the bleeding edge of tech is not necessarily the best strategy for business but in a few years the bleeding edge become the mainstream so keep yourself abreast of it.
Training costs money like all other business activities so that has to be factored into your plans for change. The flip side of that is that in a healthy business personal development, including training can be an opportunity to develop your team and encourage the sharing of new ideas. The same applies to changing your workflows and quality systems, whether they’re only defined internally or recognised and audited, e.g ISO certification.
Reviewing how you work as part of s technology review and upgrade can deliver better ways of working, increase efficiency and consequently generate more profit.
So yes, all of this costs time and money but can deliver increases in productivity and profit. In extreme cases a failure to invest cash and resources to expedite technological change at the right time can lead to the failure of an organisation. How many of us have seen inefficient and awkward process in place, eating up a colleague’s time because “nobody has the time to fix it”, shouldn’t we all look at the business case for working smarter not harder and freeing up talented, expensive staff to do what they were employed for?
The Pros & Cons of Upgrading
Compatibility Issues – If your system is anything other than a simple, stand-alone office PC this has to be a consideration. Upgrade your hardware, operating system or applications and you might have to upgrade the some or all of the rest. On the plus side of course you’ll get a newer, more capable and more reliable system.
Data Migration/Accessibility – When you’re migrating data to a new system there are two considerations; Will all the data be transferred accurately and in a usable format? And will older, perhaps archived data be available for reference should you need it for traceability or audit purposes? If you’re handing your data over to a an external organisation for conversion, is it secure, do they comply with data protection laws?
Integrations – Any useful system is connected and exchanges data with other system, be that in your own business or your suppliers/customers ensuring continuity of functionality during and after an upgrade has to be part of your plans for change. If you’re lucky enough to have a chosen your integrations well you’ll have systems whose interfaces with other systems simply work. If you went for something a little proprietary then you may incur most costs when updating your systems. A good software partner will help ease that pain.
Familiarity – Your team will be used to specific ways of doing things, both the workflows and every idiosyncrasy of the software they use. No matter how awkward existing systems are there will always be a tendency to want to keep them. Now balance that with the fact that older systems don’t just go out of support but the technical knowledge to support them disappears too as people retire, move on to other roles or simply retrain to more moderns paradigms and systems.
Cost – Change costs money, but are you already spending so much time accommodating an inefficient system that you can demonstrate and quantify a return on investment by making that change?
“We don’t have the time” – of course you’re busy but is that because you’re wasting time accommodating inappropriate systems and workflows?
Summary
It’s not always the right time to implement change. What matters is that a business understands the need for a planned programme of change and has strategies in place to implement change. Even if that change happens outside the schedule they envisaged.
No matter how busy you are:
- Review your systems regularly
- Perform a cost/benefit analysis for change, even if it’s rough, back of an envelope figures
- Create a risk analysis of continued use of old systems
- Make a business case for change
- Get buy-in from stakeholders from the get-go
- Ensure you understand the impact of change at every stage of the process to mitigate cost and business risk.