How Often Should a Business Upgrade its Technology? [And Other Questions Answered About Improving Your Systems]
If your business is considering upgrading your technology, there are several different factors you’ll need to consider in your decision making.
Where should you make improvements? How often? Does the business upgrade its technology every time there’s a new advancement? Or should you keep your equipment and software until it gives you problems?
If your business is looking to make technology upgrades, here is a helpful framework outline to follow that considers three main areas and their specific considerations:
- How often a business should upgrade its technology;
- What factors you should be considering; and
- Which areas may offer the highest return and best impact for your investment.
How Often Should a Business Upgrade Its Technology?
There’s a balance to technology upgrade timing. Upgrade too early and you may be engaging in an expensive project to sunset a system that’s still useful. Upgrade too late and your business may be slowed because of outdated infrastructure, software or equipment.
So, how often does a business need to upgrade its technology? While there are no hard and fast rules, there are signals for the optimal times to upgrade your business technology.
1. Downtime
Most systems will encounter some downtime. But when those outages or when lack of system availability becomes frequent, it can impact your productivity and your ability to deliver for your customers. If you’re seeing more and more outages due to equipment or software issues, even short ones, it’s time for a technology upgrade.
2. Business Growth
If your business is growing, it’s likely that your technology needs are as well.
If your infrastructure, equipment, software and connectivity were planned for a much smaller business, you’re likely lacking key functionality and agility that you’ll need as the business expands.
A growing business has more data and more people accessing networks and resources. As part of your growth, you should begin planning what technology upgrades are needed and do so in a scalable way that will accommodate further growth (at least for a while).
3. Changing Company Direction
If your business changes how it approaches the products it sells or services it offers, or if you’re planning launches of new products or services, it may be time to re-evaluate the effectiveness of the equipment, software and infrastructure that supports those areas of the business.
For example, many businesses have shifted from brick-and-mortar operations to a hybrid or completely remote working environment. Has your hardware, software and infrastructure been able to keep up? This change in company direction would be an important factor to consider in how often the business should upgrade its technology, especially in securing your data.
As your company transitions through upsizing, downsizing and various changes, it’s important to keep your systems optimized and secure.
4. Compatibility
As your company changes and adds new technology to your business, you’ll likely encounter existing technologies that are no longer compatible with your new systems.
An example of this would be adding a new device that’s capable of processing faster, but the remaining infrastructure is unable to handle the new processing speed. Your expectations of the new device making things better may not be realized without fully evaluating how it interacts with your other existing infrastructure.
If your legacy technology can no longer effectively communicate with the new ones, you won’t reap the benefits you’ve invested in. Especially with software changes, you could end up adding manual processes to work around the shortcomings, which defeats your initial objective.
This is obviously counterproductive and the opposite of what technology should be doing for your business, so if this sounds familiar, it’s time to have your entire infrastructure and software evaluated to make sure you actually receive the maximum benefits of a technology upgrade.
5. Security Concerns
Cybersecurity should be a priority for all companies today.
Cybercriminals are getting smarter and using more sophisticated tools. When patches and updates are no longer available for your technology, it becomes a gaping hole in your defenses. Most hardware and software vendors have an end-of-life timeframe, and after that period of time, no more development dollars are spent to make sure that it has appropriate patches and updates. This is also an issue with custom-written applications or equipment that has been custom built.
To keep your data and your customers safe, outdated technology should be phased out and replaced.
6. Productivity
Technology and productivity go hand-in-hand. But when connections become slow or experience frequent interruptions, or when workarounds are creating more manual work, your productivity is negatively impacted.
When you notice signs of productivity slowdowns, it’s time to investigate replacing the technology causing the issues.
Evaluating the Signals for Upgrading a Business’s Technology
Some signals your technical environment needs help include:
- Employee complaints about equipment;
- System availability issues;
- Waiting for things to process; and
- Manually having to combine information.
If these signals sound familiar, you’re probably in need of a technology upgrade.
For hardware, we typically recommend having these conversations every four to five years; for software, it could be more or less frequent than that.
Evaluating signals like these will help you to determine how often your business should upgrade its technology.
As part of your technology upgrade plans, it’s important to not just look at what meets your needs today, but also what your needs might be in the next three to five years.
What Factors Should Be Considered for Business Technology Upgrades?
After determining how often your business should upgrade its technology, you’ll want to determine what factors you should consider in your technology upgrades.
Evaluating IT infrastructure requires looking closely at the performance of your company’s current system and measuring that against the goals of your business. It’s important to define the business’s objectives, requirements and nice-to-haves and then determine the available offerings against that criteria.
Essentially, it’s important to ask yourself what’s important to your business. When making decisions about your company’s technical environment, there are a few overarching considerations concerning your specific operations and needs that can help guide you.
1. Access
When, where and how you access your business’s systems is an area that is always evolving with newer, higher transmission speeds. It’s important to remember that access is more than just how you connect, it’s what you can connect to, and how you’re granted access.
Identifying your business goals and needs is the first step to evaluating your access needs, and it’s crucial that these things align. Regardless of whether your business leverages an on-premise, cloud or hybrid environment, it must have consistent, secure access to be of benefit to your company.
2. Cost
As companies look to modify their technology, making smart choices regarding costs are always of utmost importance.
Your technical infrastructure needs to be looked at holistically so that you’re not focusing on fixing one issue and causing three more. Your data (and access to it) is crucial to your business, and consistent availability is needed.
Remember that making cost-cutting decisions when it comes to technology can ultimately be more expensive in remediation expenses in the long run.
3. Speed and Flexibility
Modern companies must be prepared to turn on a dime to meet customer expectations, competitor challenges and know their own company’s position.
Over the last several years, being able to work and access your company data from anywhere has proven to be an advantage if done right. It can also be a huge headache if done improperly and even put your business’s data at risk.
The huge advancements in software have allowed companies to have quicker and clearer insight into how their companies are doing. The faster you can see how things are running, the quicker you can make informed decisions about your business. Managed detection and response software can also turn a reactive approach into proactive functionality when it comes to data threats.
Finding and implementing the right solutions will provide you with the knowledge, speed and flexibility you need in today’s technological environment.
Areas to Consider When Upgrading Your Business’s Technology and Infrastructure
Once you’ve identified the timing of how often your business should upgrade its technology, and then pinpointed your access, cost, speed and flexibility requirements, you are prepared to make valuable enhancements in your company’s technology.
Here are three key areas to consider when evaluating what enhancements to make.
1. System Infrastructure and Connectivity
Increased network capacity or redundant connectivity may be worth investigating for businesses with mission-critical access needs and little tolerance for downtime.
Speed and access can be hindered by aging system infrastructure. Current servers may not be able to scale to meet the increased demand from a broader user base.
The wrong size equipment in your system infrastructure can also degrade any improvements you’ve made in bandwidth, meaning your company won’t be able to reap the benefits from the larger capacity.
It’s important to look at the entire infrastructure holistically and make sure it matches the goals you are trying to achieve.
2. Equipment
When looking to upgrade computer equipment and communication devices, companies must ask a few important questions to evaluate their own priorities:
- What do employees need to be productive?
- Is remote access needed on a consistent or an as-needed basis?
- How many people need new or upgraded equipment?
For instance, business analysts who have been running computationally intensive statistical models on desktop computers would likely need equally powerful laptops capable of meeting the demands of their work, while an administrative team member hardly needs the same kind of power from a workstation.
Yet, the reverse may be true when it comes to communication. The business analyst may have minimal needs when it comes to video conferencing or remote access to a business phone, while an administrative team member may rely heavily on phone or video calls to maintain communication with other employees and vendors.
3. The Cloud
The cloud has revolutionized how businesses utilize computing resources, and it’s definitely something to consider if you’re looking to upgrade your business’s technology. The most attractive benefits of cloud solutions include potential cost savings and the minimal resources needed to maintain cloud-based applications.
With a cloud-hosted server, the addition of hardware resources can be immediate with very little or no interruption to your business. There are also cloud options that include server updates and patching as part of the solution.
Cloud solutions also offer the flexibility and wide availability that can prove to be beneficial. The cloud can simplify a team’s access to applications and storage from wherever they are working at a given time, without needing to change workflow or learn new applications.
Learn More About How, Where and How Often a Business Should Upgrade Its Technology
If done thoughtfully and correctly, technology upgrades can lead to better services that meet the access requirements of the workforce, while encouraging speed and flexibility to address business needs in a shifting operational landscape, all which lead to better service to your customers.
If you’d like to discuss your business’s specific needs and what technology upgrades can make the biggest impact on your company, connect with a Warren Averett Technology Group team member who can help.
This article was originally published on October 27, 2021 and most recently updated on February 27, 2023.