When the pandemic hit, most businesses were forced to go digital. This pushes the investments in technology to skyrocket. As people started working from home, they spent most of their time indoors. This led to a boom in online shopping, digital entertainment and pushed the demand for collaboration and communication tools through the roof.
Coming off fantastic two years, tech companies were hopeful for a similar result in 2022. As rising inflation forces countries to increase their interest rate, it slows down the economy. That slow down led to growing recession concerns. Tech businesses took a hit as their stocks started to tumble and many of them started laying off employees.
If you are CIO at a tech company, how can you fight this recession? By making the right technology investments that will pay rich dividends even if we go into a long and painful recession. With shrinking IT budgets, you don’t want to be betting your money on wrong investments. To help you make sound technology investments, we have created a list of eight investments you should make to recession proof your business.
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8 Tech Investments That Will Pay Off During a Recession
Here are eight technology investments you should make before the recession hits.
Agile
If you are still stuck with traditional processes and tools instead of agile ones, you are already behind the curve. If you want to respond to changes quickly and in an efficient manner then agile is a no brainer. It will also make your business more resilient to recessions.
With agile, you can drastically increase the frequency of check-ins, which makes it easier for businesses to create alignment with business goals and improve the quality of product and service. It can also come in handy when you have to migrate from one environment to another such as migrating from a dedicated servers amsterdam to a cheap dedicated server.
Collaboration Tools
This one is pretty obvious and most businesses might have already made that investment, which is a good thing. Yes, I am talking about collaboration tools. These collaboration tools help you work closely with other individuals from different departments to create a comprehensive strategy to overcome challenges posed by recession. Without a clearly defined strategy, CIOs are forced to take temporary decisions, which won’t work in the long run. Instead, they should look to align IT team objectives with overarching business goals.
Cloud Native Technology
One technology investment that is usually not on the radar of IT leaders is cloud native technologies. Migrating to a cloud native stack including cloud native application from dedicated server reviews might seem like a daunting task initially especially with the data integration tools but it is an investment that will pay rich dividends in the long run. This will save you from a lot of manual work especially when it comes to new integrations and implementing changes. Apart from that, it will drastically reduce your IT costs while helping you achieve higher ROI quickly.
Investment In Emerging Technology
In today’s highly competitive business environment, you need something that can differentiate your business from your competitors. It could be an emerging technology such as cheap dedicated server hosting or it could be an innovative product or service. If you are looking to gain an upper hand over your competitors through technology then you must keep a close eye on investment technologies. Look for technologies that can benefit your organization instead of just following the hype.
Cost-Value Analysis Tools
When times are tough, you have to be extra cautious with your spending. With the recession threat looming large, the tech industry will be cutting back on their IT budgets. That is where it is important to decide which investments to make and which ones to avoid. How would you know that? With the help of a cost value analysis tool.
Evaluate each investment you are planning to make based on how much it costs and the value it delivers. If it is delivering more value than it costs, it is a worthy investment. On the flipside, if it is costing much more than the value it delivers, you should not invest in it. By understanding how every element of an IT infrastructure supports different business elements will also make investment decisions easier.
Automation and Productivity Tools
The core focus of IT leaders should be to safeguard projects which directly impacts the efficiency of your organization from the harmful effects of a recession. If there is a project that could be hampered by a recession and it directly relates to the overall efficiency of your business, you should fast track it and complete it before the recession hits.
Similarly, you should leverage automation as research has shown that top performing IT companies automates twice as many processes as compared to poor performing IT companies. Not only does it reduce their costs but it also makes it easier for them to manage everything.
Business Intelligence and Analytics Tools
Sometimes, investing in tools that give you actionable insights, better visibility and assist you in ensuring transparency can be a great investment. Recessions are exactly those times when you need to make data driven decisions. This won’t be possible without capable business intelligence and analytics tools. Investing in enhancing your analytical capabilities and combining it with smart reporting tools will pay off during troubled times.
Resource Management Tools
As businesses cut back on their spending, IT leaders will be forced to play around with limited budgets. They will not only have to look for ways to get the best out of their IT budgets but also reduce costs and divert those funds to core initiatives which require more investments. This could be done by completing projects earlier or minimizing waste and errors. The IT costs will go down during a recession but you should put all these resources to good use by investing in resource management tools.
Which of these tech investments are you planning to make and why? Share it with us in the comments section below.
