The digital space is expanding at an unprecedented rate. With resource downsizing and budgets squeezed tighter than a Japanese subway car, it can be a challenge to find the right technologies and services to support your business at a price you can afford. Add to the mix the need for qualified personnel who can plan, implement, and manage them, and you’ve got a quest that’s worthy of Hercules.
Here are seven keys you can use right away to help unlock the complexity of the technologies and services needed to support your digital business. Whether you’re selecting a vendor, product, or service, using these keys will help you make informed decisions and get the most bang for whatever bucks you do have left in your budget.
Organizational Fit means defining and matching the features, benefits, and risks inherent in digital technologies and services to the needs and capacities of the organization and the people it serves. This is not only critical during the planning and implementation stages of technologies and services, but also throughout their life cycle.
Appropriate Technology means choosing and using technology products and services that meet a given requirement in the most efficient and effective manner. For example, this might mean selecting an open source content management system (CMS) that offers most of the ‘must have’ features you need, along with the ability to customize the platform as your needs change, over a custom developed, “black box” proprietary solution that could cost much more. Control your destiny (and your dollars) by embracing open, modular solutions that free you from the ongoing control of a technology vendor.
Usable Design means selecting, modifying, and using products and services that fit the needs of the users and the organization and not vice versa. Getting the users of your digital products and services involved in the design process early is critical. The days of ‘build it and they will come’ are over. Today, ignoring that fact that users wants more control over their digital experiences is a huge mistake – and one you can easily avoid by simply taking the time to ask them what they want.
Manageable and Supportable Technology refers to products and services that can be managed and supported by the people using them. Does it make sense to implement a digital product or service only to learn that you can’t support it? Or worse, that it will cost you many times the purchase price to provide the care and feeding it needs?
Interoperable means cross-platform and multi-platform support; the ability for one type of product or service to communicate or work with another, regardless of vendor. Can you seamlessly add commercially available or open source community support or video player technology to the CMS platform you’re considering? If you’re thinking about implementing a “closed” system that offers limited or no interoperability, think again.
Scalable means minimal change is necessary in current configurations to accommodate growth. Scalability promotes reduced cost and effort. While (sometimes major) changes will inevitably occur as your business and related markets change, selecting scalable solutions ensures that the cost and effort to meet these changes can be reduced, allowing for easier, iterative updates and transformations.
Portable means products that support several hardware platforms with different versions or built-in capabilities for switching between them. For example, web server software, community software, and databases that run on different hardware platforms and operating systems.
What are your experiences with technology and services in the digital space? We’d love to hear about them, so please leave them in the comments below.
-Gene