Building a Technology Platform to Meet Your Goals

By Eze Castle Integration | Thursday, September 3rd, 2020

Technology plays a vital role in determining how successful organizations are in meeting their goals. Together, the right technology and IT strategy enables a firm to practice agility through adapting its business models to changing needs of the firm, as well as enhancing existing services and products to meet the ever-evolving needs of the market. Having the right security practices in place is also fundamental to ensuring a firm’s reputation remains intact no matter how aggressive the cyber threat landscape may become. This blog article will share steps to building the best technology platform to deliver your organizational goals in today’s digital age.

Step #1: Take Technology Talks to the Boardroom

Talks around technology should not be limited to the IT department anymore. Today’s firms must take these discussions into the boardroom as we continue to see more and more business decisions being influenced by advancements in IT. It’s C-suite level executives who often bridge the gap between the two, in efforts to align IT strategy to wider business strategy. This approach enables firms to expand their agility and start responding to change with decisions that are measured and informed.

Getting stakeholder buy-in and investment to facilitate the alignment of IT to the overall strategic direction of the organisation can unlock many benefits for businesses. These include, but are not limited to the following:

Enhanced operational productivity
Standardization of workflow processes
Implementation of new, improved business strategies
Competitive advantage gained from deploying new technology
Improved communications (internal and external)
Sustainable service levels
Reduced costs

Step #2: Choose an Infrastructure Model to Suit Your Business

While you may have decided to start out with an on-premise infrastructure, it is certainly worth considering migration to the cloud, to take your business to new heights. Take a look at the table below for a comparison of the two models and determine which is most suited to reach your goals in a timely and effective manner.

Step #3: Implementation of Ongoing Risk Assessment

With buy-in from the powers that be, whether that’s internal stakeholders or investors, it is important to invest in nurturing internal skill-set, or, to partner with a third-party provider to effectively assess your firm’s security practices. Ongoing security best security practices include:

24x7 Monitoring, Detection & Response with a Managed SIEM
Stop Targeted Account Takeovers with Dark Web Monitoring
Employee Training & Awareness with Managed Phishing and Training
Asset & Inventory Management
Complete Patch Management Service

Step #4: Decide How to Build and Maintain Your Technology Platform

Deciding on whether you’d like to retain an inhouse IT team or outsource your technology operations to a third-party provider comes with many considerations. It’s important to weigh these out to determine which approach is best suited to achieving your organisational goals now and in the future. Take a look at the table below for a cross comparison of the two, and apply it to your firm to help make an informed decision.

This article was written in 2019 and has been republished.