Your tech stack could be the reason your organization is inefficient
The pressure on businesses to digitalize has changed the way they work, fueling a growing trend of adopting new technologies to stay competitive and improve efficiency. However, this drive for modernization leads to an overuse of point solutions designed to address one specific problem within an organization. The result? Vast and disjointed technology packages in companies that reduce efficiency and disrupt workflow.
In recent years, many teams have had two main priorities: enabling business in a highly remote world and driving growth at any cost. And because they had access to the capital needed to purchase technology, many adopted a range of incremental technologies to address specific challenges within their departments. Whether it was a new tool for requesting employee leave for HR or a new tool for managing tax compliance for the financial industry, organizations were constantly bringing new software to market and doing so without much effort. taking existing processes into account.
Fast forward to today and companies are in a different position than in recent years. The focus for many is on increasing efficiency and enabling people to do their most productive work. But instead of their existing technology working for them, in many cases it further erodes efficiency.
Overconsumption and underutilization of software detract from efficiency
Many organizations have the best intentions when purchasing software: they adopt it to perform tasks better, faster and smarter. But problems arise when organizations have deployed more software than they need, have redundant technologies, have not integrated the systems, or are not utilizing the software to its full potential.
The beauty of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is that it makes it easier for organizations to adopt, implement and use technologies to solve specific challenges. But it’s also for the exact same reasons that companies are in the position they are in today. Teams have been able to purchase their own software solutions to solve their specific challenges and individual processes. This increases the agility of teams to solve problems with technology, but also causes disruptions to broader processes and workflows across the organization.
These implications emerge in many forms. Business leaders and teams now have siled data, unnecessary technology spend, and broken processes that prevent people from being efficient and getting their work done properly. IT teams are also burdened by an overwhelming amount of software deployments and additional security concerns that come with software adoption without proper governance.
To solve these challenges, many organizations have looked for ways to consolidate their technologies.
Software consolidation is key
A recent report found that 72% of CIOs are concerned about the impact of app proliferation, while another report found that mid-market companies waste an average of £18 million annually on unused software licenses. And according to Canva’s 2024 CIO Report, 64% of organizations say they don’t have enough staff to train employees on new technologies. The data is clear: organizations need to consolidate their technology stacks. And that’s exactly what they do to achieve widespread efficiency across all departments.
But a successful software consolidation strategy requires more than just cutting technology: processes must be taken into account.
Think about how work flows through an organization. Data is needed to move between people and technology. As an organization consolidates its technology stack, it is important to understand what technology is needed to retain to ensure business processes and workflows run as efficiently as possible.
End-to-end process automation allows organizations to identify where the current inefficiencies lie in their processes, including the technology that isn’t working for them. It also allows organizations to apply automation to orchestrate workflows across departments for maximum efficiency. And because disconnected and siled data is a key driver for software consolidation, process automation allows business leaders to easily build applications that bring optimized workflows and processes to life.
Taking a strategic approach to processes can help uncover overlapping tools and underutilized licenses and replace point solutions with easy-to-use applications that help work flow efficiently and effectively across the organization. By consolidating software with a focus on process, organizations can easily adopt new technologies, such as AI tools, on top of already optimized workflows in the future. This makes adoption and implementation easier and prevents disruption of processes.
If the primary mandate for organizations today is efficiency, the path to operational excellence starts with empowering your team members by removing friction at work. Reducing the proliferation of software and optimizing processes to connect data between people and systems is a key factor in eliminating that friction.
Technology can solve your efficiency challenges, if applied and used with the process in mind. Without a process, there’s a good chance that technology is the main reason your people and teams struggle to be productive and efficient.
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