Why Your Company Should Have a Technology Roadmap

Technology can help your business achieve great things. Use your technological tools with purpose, and they can help you improve all your company’s most important metrics. Want to increase productivity and operational efficiency? Technology can help. Lower costs, yes, technology can indeed help you.

However, the key to using technology purposefully is to have a kind of strategic roadmap. And that’s precisely where a technology roadmap comes in — to help you use technology in a way that helps you reach your goals.

But what exactly is a technology roadmap, and who should be involved?

A technology roadmap, also known as an IT roadmap, is a plan or document that outlines your use of technology to reach business goals, both short and long-term. 

At Amoeba, our technology roadmaps include the following business and IT categories:

1. Discussion about pain points, solutions, and potential projects
2. Technology lifecycle management (old computers, warranties, etc.)
3. New technologies and SaaS services (cloud migrations, forward-looking changes)
4. Company sizing predictions (scaling up or down)
5. Service delivery evaluation, introduce new MSP services
6. Cybersecurity and policy discussions

And as you know, technology is not limited to one set of roles or departments in your organization. Technology encompasses everything and everyone. That’s why it’s critical that your technology roadmap planning committee includes at least one person from your vital departments, like sales, marketing, product and project management, legal, operations, and finance. Including decision-making roles, which are better than generalist roles.

Now when you’re starting to understand more about the benefits a technology roadmap can have for your company, let’s dive down into the key reasons your company should have a technology roadmap in place.

Crafting a technology roadmap allows you to get a thorough understanding of where your company is in terms of its current IT and tech. By outlining your existing technology landscape, you know what you have and can measure it against the current market. 

Is your technology old and outdated? Do you have updates or improvements coming up in certain areas? A technology roadmap will answer all these questions and allow you to take the temperature of your current IT and technology status so you can make changes that align with business goals.

A technology roadmap is the ultimate planning help for effective budgeting. After outlining what you have, necessary changes and improvements, and how your technology aligns with your goals, you better understand what you need to invest.

With a complete roadmap, there are no more guesses. You’ll know what you budget for, and more importantly, why you do it. And by building a list of technology initiatives and IT projects, you’ll know what to invest into resources, assignments, software, and vendors, in terms of your IT and technology.

A complete analysis of your business technology and IT will give you a great insight into what you need to do to ensure the newest and most effective technologies help your goals. For example, Amoeba has helped many clients migrate from on-premise mail and file servers to new cloud services.

Decision-making is hard. But with a technology roadmap, you can make more better-informed decisions that align with your most important business objectives. And because your technology roadmap is all-encompassing, it will impact all areas of your organization for an exponentially better effect. 

This planning will also allow you to better predict where the future market is headed so that you can stay ahead even in highly competitive spaces.

Device lifecycle management means ensuring your wireless devices are updated, modern, and fully functional to allow everyone in your organization to perform at their best. Productivity is heavily reliant on working technology. A faster computer allows workers to work more efficiently. And on the other side of the scale, a non-working device will cause productivity hiccups that can have widespread effects in your company.

A vital part of a technology roadmap is making sure your physical hardware is up-to-date. That means computers, cellphones, and other technology your workers need to perform at their best. By knowing the status of your workforce’s devices, you know when to update and replace devices before they reach their end-of-life — and before they negatively impact productivity.

A technology roadmap also serves as a great guide in project management. With thorough planning of your organizational technology and IT, you’ll know what types of projects will best align with your organizational goals and what you need to make them a reality.

Planning is key. And a technology roadmap can help you stay on track with internal projects.

As you now have learned, a technology roadmap can help your company in many different ways. Not only can they serve as a guide for project management, but they also help you assess your current technology and help you get ahead in technologies.

A technology roadmap also helps CFO’s and COO’s make better strategic decisions. You’ll know how to budget to reach overarching business goals and know what to do to improve and keep productivity and operational efficiency.

Want a complete strategy to help you make better use of technology? Contact Amoeba today!