Could Your Business Survive a Disaster?

Our hearts go out to all of the people affected by Hurricane Harvey in the gulf coast states. The images that we are seeing in the media are dramatic and we can only imagine what the people are going through as their lives are endangered, and they see their homes and businesses damaged or destroyed. Right now efforts in the area are focused on safety and shelter. When the storm ends and the waters start to recede, businesses large and small will have to figure out how they will get back up and running. Do you know what you would do if this was you? What does it take for a business to survive a disaster?

IT strategy is a way to guide decision making about technology that unleashes benefits that ultimately help the company succeed. It is not a practice that should be confined to enterprise level companies although small and medium sized companies often find that lack of IT expertise in the area of strategy acts as a barrier to its use. Companies of all sizes are dependent upon technology for their business processes, and all can reap the benefits of IT strategy to improve and grow. That's why more and more executives want to know - what is IT strategy?

There are people who think that their business technology doesn’t do anything more than what they can do with paper and pencil, and there are people who see technology as their ticket to business success. Where you sit between these two perspectives has a lot to do with the experiences that you have had with technology. It’s certainly hard to see the potential for IT to improve business if you are constantly frustrated with IT issues. In fact, trying to leverage technology on an unreliable framework is like trying to build a sand castle while the tide is coming in. Imagine that you could change that and you had a stable technology foundation on which to grow. What could you do right now to better leverage technology to improve your business?

Changing over to a new software system doesn’t usually make the news unless it has a price tag like the one that Mayo Clinic is paying to consolidate their Electronic Medical Records (EMR) system. The Rochester Post Bulletin reported that the clinic will pay about $1.5 billion for this project that will not be complete at all Mayo locations until October 2018.

The price tag reflects the huge scope of the initiative that also includes updates to the clinic’s network, security upgrades and a whole lot of training for staff. You can bet that this IT investment is no gamble for Mayo administrators, and that their decision to move forward was backed by solid data regarding the return that they expect to receive from the initiative. That’s just how SMB executives would like to make their decisions about IT investments.