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Being able to overcome challenges is one of the keys to success in business. Technology challenges are no exception. Efficiently dealing with technical problems that affect employees and customers can help set a business apart from its competition.

There are many ways technology in businesses can help organizations achieve success. To assist your business prepare for technology 2022 challenges, here’s an outline of some of the ways tech helps businesses and some of the biggest technology challenges for small businesses.

How Technology Helps Businesses

Some examples of how digital transformations help businesses every day include: 

• Cloud-Based Collaboration Apps: Communication tools such as Zoom and Slack, as well as online document sharing solutions like Google Docs and Microsoft Teams, allow people to work together easily on important documents and projects despite being miles apart. 
• Inventory Management Solutions: Automated inventory tracking software helps businesses closely monitor their stock of important products or resources so they can maintain “just-in-time” supply chains that minimize costs without undue risk of running out of inventory. 
• Customer-Facing Business Apps: From digital storefronts to automated customer service solutions and other resources, customer-facing business applications, and particularly mobile applications, have helped businesses improve the way they interact with their customers to increase sales and customer retention. 
• Data Storage and Retrieval: Companies can store and retrieve massive amounts of information at nearly any time from almost anywhere. Digital data storage has simplified the retrieval and transmission of important documents, reducing common data management tasks to mere seconds. 
• Project Software: Project management software helps businesses track common project tasks and keep their project teams on track. With these solutions, project managers can assign out specific tasks and monitor whether employees are on track to finish the project on time. 

These are just a small handful of the ways that developing tech has helped organizations of all sizes and industries. However, there are many challenges that using technology in businesses can bring as well.

14 Technology Challenges Businesses May Face

IT professionals like ourselves, are often all too aware of the computer problems, technical issues, and software training difficulties that businesses face. While some problems are never-ending, others rise and fall with the introduction of new technologies and solutions.

1. INFORMATION SECURITY

Information security is a major issue for any business. Protecting sensitive intellectual property (IP) data, financial documents, and customer information is vital for keeping the business healthy and competitive.

According to research, the average cost of a data breach in the U.S. is $8.64 million, making the U.S. the most expensive country for data breaches.

The issue is that cybersecurity can be an incredibly difficult issue to deal with. Why? Because:

• Different businesses have different information security requirements they need to follow
• Malicious actors are constantly creating new cyber threats and attack strategies
• Many companies don’t have qualified IT professionals specializing in cybersecurity

This is why many businesses, particularly smaller ones with fewer resources, often choose to hire outsourced cybersecurity firms, such as ourselves.

2. DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

Digital transformation, or the integration of technology into virtually every aspect of a business, isn’t often a goal for businesses. Instead, the growth of technology in business operations often leads to an incidental kind of digital transformation, one with a disorganized nature that leads to an inconsistent experience for users of the organization’s applications.

Taking a more mindful approach to digital transformation that considers how each piece of technology is integrated into the whole of the business’ operations, from mobile apps to data collection tools, can be crucial for ensuring a smooth transition. This is where our IT advisory services and solutions can help.

3. THE CLOUD

While cloud-based services, like platform-as-a-service (PaaS), software-as-a-service (SaaS), and disaster recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS), can be fast and cost-efficient methods for a business to solve specific challenges, not all cloud solutions are created equally.

It’s important for a business to have a clear strategy for adopting cloud solutions, including how they plan to deal with their legacy systems that may not be compatible with cloud-based technologies. We work as your dedicated partner to provide custom cloud solutions which can be incredibly helpful for overcoming the challenge of integrating the cloud with the business’ operations.

4. COMPLIANCE

Every business has to deal with a variety of compliance requirements. The challenge is that the specific requirements a business needs to meet can vary depending on a variety of factors such as:

• Company size
• Industry vertical
• Specific business model 
• Area of operation
• Customers served

Knowing which regulations and compliance standards apply to your business’ technology is a major part of avoiding potential fines and other penalties that can negatively impact the company’s operations. Having both business attorneys and our IT professionals with experience in your company’s industry can help.

5. INTERNET OF THINGS (IoT)

IoT devices have become a mainstay for both consumers and businesses. However, in a company’s digital transformation strategy, the Internet of Things can be a massive, unplanned IT hurdle.

IoT devices may often be forgotten about when organizations map out their IT infrastructure, creating potential gaps in their cybersecurity. For example, if there’s an unsecured IoT device, like a smart speaker, connected to the company’s secure Wi-Fi network, a malicious actor might be able to use that device to compromise the network.

Lack of firmware validation, secure delivery (un-encrypted in transit), anti-rollback mechanisms, multi-factor authentication, and dismissing notifications of security changes due to updates all contribute to security problems with IoT devices.

6. AUTOMATION

Automation is important for many businesses. Automation tools can streamline processes, increase employee safety, and help reduce costs. Many companies use business process automation tools to automate the collection or transmission of data needed for specific workflows.

However, introducing new automation tools into any business workflow can create complications. Employees may need time to adjust to new automation tools and some may not easily adopt a new solution.

7. INTEGRATIONS AND UPGRADES                              

A critical part of any digital transformation is managing integrations and upgrades. Integrating legacy systems into new technology and platforms, or upgrading/replacing those systems so they work with new architectures, can be a long and costly process that may not always go as planned.

There is always a chance for an application programming interface (API) failing to communicate properly between systems, equipment and software upgrades may be more costly than originally budgeted for, and some upgrades may take a long time eating up the resources and budget.

We have partnerships with a variety of vendors, so we can help you save money on products and services, like devices for your employees, security services, and cloud services. We’ll help you create an effective IT management plan that removes the risk factors associated with integrations and upgrades for your modern businesses.

8. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND MACHINE LEARNING

Artificial intelligence (AI) solutions help power many of the automation tools that businesses rely on. Machine learning, or the process by which AI programs use aggregated data to make improvements to predictive models or learn how to complete specific tasks without human input, is a major focus of many companies offering AI solutions to common business challenges.

However, not every AI and machine learning algorithm is created equally. It takes a lot of effort to find the right AI and machine learning algorithm for a given company’s business processes, we can help you do that.

9. REMOTE WORK SUPPORT

While many companies had been heading towards a remote workforce, the COVID-19 epidemic greatly sped things along. Now, “work from home” policies have become the norm and that isn’t likely to change any time soon, about two-thirds of U.S. workers who work remotely want to continue doing so.

Integrating cloud-based services and mobile apps that make collaboration between employees who are working remotely will be crucial for ensuring consistent remote work engagement. Additionally, companies will need to find ways to optimize IT support for employees working remotely to help solve common computer problems and other issues.

10. DATA MANAGEMENT

To ensure smooth business operations, employees need to have consistent and ready access to the information their job roles require them to have. However, businesses also need to ensure that sensitive data is protected from illicit access by unscrupulous individuals.

Effective data management can be difficult, as enforcing role-based access to specific databases, ensuring continuity of data access in case of a disaster (a cyberattack or a loss of power at a data center), and keeping malicious actors out of the company’s data requires extensive preparation and resources.

11. FOCUS ON MOBILITY

Mobile apps have become a basic part of many business processes and for good reason. 81% of people in the U.S. now own a smartphone of some kind, this means that the vast majority of workers probably have access to a smartphone, and many use their smartphones for both work and leisure.

Mobile enterprise applications can help employers give their employees the tools they need to collaborate more efficiently when working remotely. However, the variety of mobile device hardware and software (Apple’s iPhones, Android devices, etc.), can make ensuring a consistent and stable enterprise mobile app experience challenging.

12. LACK OF TECHNICAL TRAINING

Not every employee in an organization can be an IT professional, technology is challenging but getting employees to a basic level of technical competency is important. Ensuring employees can successfully use enterprise applications, automation tools, and other IT assets provided by the company is critical to maximize possible ROI from IT initiatives.

13. INFRASTRUCTURE CHANGES

Major changes to a company’s IT infrastructure brought about by the implementation of new solutions and technologies can have a major disruptive effect on business operations. These disruptions can cost time and money as employees struggle to learn how to work with these big changes.

Additionally, internally managing infrastructure changes can itself be a costly and time-consuming process. From provisioning IT capacity to managing the installation of upgraded systems, handling updates, and troubleshooting new solutions, doing things internally can be a massive time and money sink.

This is why many companies choose to leverage the benefits of outsourcing their IT needs to our management services so we can assist them in planning their infrastructure changes and handling all of the above.

14. PROJECT MANAGEMENT

IT project management, or the planning, organization, and implementation of IT initiatives, can be a difficult subject. Ineffective project management can easily lead to scope creep, budget overruns, and extensive delays for key IT initiatives, which can negatively impact IT ROI.

Tracking IT project spend and the ROI for each initiative is crucial for avoiding overspending, wasting money on projects with no appreciable ROI, and optimizing future projects. We offer flexible, transparent pricing that adapts to your specific business needs and goals.

Don’t put your IT needs off any longer, empower your IT today with BVA!