As we come through the pandemic, and reflect on how our businesses operated, it’s probably not as bad as we first feared. Apart from our people working from home there was one key area where we had to make significant changes to keep going – our IT. For most of us, the move from office-based working to homeworking almost overnight led to many challenges. The most critical one was allowing people to securely do their jobs from home and in doing so keep productivity to acceptable levels. This is where IT came into its own – we had to change fundamentally how tech was used at point of access in our businesses just to keep going. This was a major shift to our business model, and whilst it may not have gone 100% smoothly, we ultimately made it by undertaking this enormous change exercise to continue to trade.

Before the pandemic many business leaders I’ve met viewed IT as a financial black hole, or at the very least a cost centre they did not fully understand. Large scale technical changes had been put off or filled leaders which such dread they held off until the change was the last resort. These changes might be a new finance system, an alternative CRM system or even simply reviewing the true capabilities of the IT team and what they do to see if they’re added value.
Now here’s the thing business leaders – we probably undertook the biggest IT Change our businesses has ever seen under particularly stressful times and got through it. If we did it in a fast, reactive way then, We can do it in a controlled, proactive way now.

Pretty much every other business in the UK has been through what we’ve been through, and many will take the same viewpoint as me and look to change even more for the better.
You can guarantee that at least one of your competitors will think this too.
Now is the time to keep the momentum going with respect to your tech and data: strategically reviewing how IT contributes to your business plan and looking at how with more robust business intelligence management you can grow your business further is easily within reach.
You don’t have to be a techie to manage IT – you need to know what you want from it and make it happen!

By Andrew Rozzier BEng MBCS MIIM

Andrew Rozzier is CEO of Bentlebury, a Digital Transformation consultancy based in Northamptonshire. A former Business Link and Velocity Growth Hub adviser, Andrew has also been a director of multiple businesses in many sectors leading on data and technology best practice to facilitate business growth.