Does Your Business Have Tech Debt?
By David Stidham, Operations Manager at Cenetric
Debt isn’t really anyone’s favorite thing to think about, but there’s a sneaky type that might need your business’s attention: tech debt. It can cost you as much as any other kind of debt, but it can be tough to quantify — and even tougher to eliminate.
What’s tech debt?
In short, tech debt is all those tech investments you’ve made in the past that are key parts of your business, but now they take more value than they give. They cost you more to maintain and keep around than a newer solution would. They take more time to manage and expose you to more risk.
Dated hardware, aging software and in-house solutions that don’t measure up to modern options all fall into this bucket. Take a minute to consider all your team’s technology that seems easier to update or patch or “just deal with” than replace.
Information Week calls these past implementations that now slow you down “hard” tech debt, but they also caution businesses about “soft” tech debt — all the solutions you didn’t invest in, costing you opportunities or causing you to fall behind your competitors. This could be anything from investing in tools to provide chat as a customer service channel to offering customers new payment technologies.
The dangers of not addressing tech debt
Even if they know they should, businesses aren’t always eager to address tech debt and implement new solutions. Accenture research found that IT executives are spending more than half (57%) of their resources on maintaining existing systems instead of on innovation.
Why? In part, because people don’t like change. That’s no big revelation, of course, but Gartner research has documented just how big an impact change can have on an organization. Their recent study shows that as changes increase in a business, employees’ tolerance for it decreases proportionally. Too much change creates “change fatigue,” which harms employee engagement, productivity, and, ultimately, retention.
And, of course, the financial cost to update hardware, software or networks can make a business hesitant to upgrade — it’s a big investment and the ROI can be tough to nail down. But working with experts to help you evaluate your tech needs, root out tech debt, and identify opportunities will ease your mind about the spend.
While tech debt is typically a bigger problem for enterprises than SMBs, growing businesses without an IT staff can easily find themselves with a disorganized, costly tech stack. A few laptops here and a software subscription there can really add up in cost and complexity year over year.
And even if you do have a team, they might be so focused on day-to-day issues that they’ve lost sight of your overall tech strategy.
The better way to manage tech debt and IT investments
Turning to experts like Cenetric will take the burden of evaluating your infrastructure off your shoulders. We can learn more about your goals and needs and look at your entire tech landscape to see where there are gaps, hard or soft tech debt, and opportunities to achieve your goals faster.
We’ll evaluate whether there are better solutions for your business that you might not be aware of — and will cost you less. We can look at your existing:
- Hardware and devices
- Software, whether it’s homegrown or off the shelf
- Network design
- Cloud infrastructure
Once we establish where tech debt exists and where you can improve, we can work to find the best solutions to help you do it. Because we’re vendor-neutral, we aren’t tied to any provider and can help you find the exact right fit for your needs.
We’ll also help you keep change fatigue at bay by helping you not only carefully select the right technologies that will minimize disruption but also train your team to use the new solutions and help you generate enthusiasm for them among your team.
Helping you make the most of your IT spend is one of our specialties — we never let you lose sight of efficiency, productivity, or the bottom line. We’ve helped our clients:
- Streamline their network by upgrading and modernizing network equipment
- Eliminate costly physical servers and move to the cloud
- Leave an end-of-life server behind and move to a budget-friendly solution
Let Cenetric help you eliminate tech debt and reach your goals faster
Evaluating tech debt probably isn’t at the top of your to-do list, and it doesn’t have to be. Working with a team of experts will help you streamline your tech and your spending at the same time, letting you focus on what you do best in your business.
Cenetric has the experience and availability to support your team in Kansas City — or anywhere else. Tell us about your project and we’ll be in touch to get started right away.