Aligning your technology strategy to your business priorities

Can your current ERP solution adequately deliver on your business priorities? According to a recent Forrester report, commissioned by Sage, 51% of small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) surveyed believe that their existing ERP solution was inadequate for delivering on their stated business priorities.

The report, Finding the right technology strategy for your unique business priorities, surveyed technology decision makers from SMBs in the US to better understand how they were adapting their ERP solutions to support business priorities.

One of the key findings from the report was that companies generally fell into one of three categories based on their business priorities.

1. Continuous improvers, who prioritized revenue growth and took a more cautious approach to cloud adoption.
2. Operators, who prioritized reducing costs and were more likely to optimize existing internal processes.
3. Innovators, who prioritized improving customer experience and had a greater appetite for technology investments.

The full report takes an in-depth look at each of these three groups and offers recommendations for each one’s technology strategy.

Excerpt from “Finding the right technology strategy for your unique business priorities”

Technology is the backbone of modern business, but the pace at which business priorities can change is leaving some small and mid-size businesses scrambling to find the best technology to support their immediate (and long-term) business needs. Our survey found that 63% of companies surveyed (i.e., SMBs in manufacturing and distribution) are constantly trying to keep up with the latest capabilities and solutions because they know technology is an important part of their businesses.  However, this rapid speed of change is a double-edged sword; While survey respondents want a technical foundation to adapt quickly to changing business requirements, they also struggle to keep up with the latest technology.

Cloud is an important component of this technology evolution, and companies equate transformation with cloud migration. Nearly two-thirds of companies surveyed are deploying at least some of their front- and/or back-office applications in the cloud. In a recent Forrester Analytics Business Technographics survey – filtered specifically for US-based SMBs in manufacturing and distribution industries – Forrester found that 70% of respondents were migrating existing apps to the cloud as part of their business modernization plan.

Cloud is part of the solution, not the solution in and of itself

Despite this rising adoption of cloud, cloud is not the right approach for everything. Our survey found that companies are taking a hybrid approach – mixing on-premise and cloud-based solutions for different systems – as they try to right-size their technology strategies for the best overall outcomes.