Today’s economic uncertainty is driven by a combination of indicators never seen pre-pandemic. This has created an environment of doubt among technology leaders of midsize enterprises (MSE) on how to manage technology best in the future. These leaders must combat inherent resource limitations brought on by availability or demand competition with a focus on cost optimization. They must execute properly and optimize to evolve from cost saving to value creation. This sounds easy, but managing technical and non-technical people across the organization to drive technology initiatives along with process and technology portfolio optimization is a loaded task for any CIO or CTO.
According to Gartner, “MSE leadership typically lacks adequate visibility into the enterprise technology spend, and a suboptimal technology portfolio consumes unnecessary amounts of scarce financial and staff resources. MSE often faces inherent staffing and skills constraints.”
Today’s technology and vendor landscape provides leadership opportunities to consider how they want to spend constrained staff resources carefully. When carefully considered, options such as value-added platform engineering firms and managed service providers (MSPs) can play a part in creating a more efficient and effective IT operation. This is where cost optimization techniques advance the discussion from focusing solely on the cost to including value.
From a cost optimization perspective, the value of a well-placed technology portfolio strategy lies in reducing or eliminating staff time in low-value activity using MSPs, augmenting senior talent from value-add technology firms for accelerating technology delivery and the learning curve for in-house teams, and the ability to have a more mobile and flexible workforce. Less burden on staff over time can result in significant savings. Positioning IT staff to invest more strategically in the business has a significant potential upside in value to the company. Using value-added technology firms to support a well-thought-out outsourcing strategy can help mitigate talent shortages and the cost of finding and hiring expensive talent for the rapidly changing technology stack.
The guiding question is, “Is your enterprise getting the most value from your IT staff”?
The points mentioned above are high-level guidelines for holistically thinking about giving your IT staff the support they need to accelerate the path toward value creation.
If you are interested in learning more about how software delivery firms like Fuzzitech can assist in accelerating your journey for value creation using technology, you can reach me at rizwan.khan@fuzzitech.com.
