The Corporate Challenge: Technology Scatter

Remote workers, a 24-hour workday, satellite locations, different platform preferences, and distributed data and networks present an unavoidable problem to today’s organizations -- technology scatter.  With IT becoming an ever-increasing part of overall business strategy, it’s important to get a handle on this situation, before it becomes detrimental to your organization.  Before you can address the scatter, however, you need to understand how the scatter is affecting your organization.  The geographic technology scatter that occurs from remote workers and satellite offices; the platform scatter that is generated by Blackberry vs. Droid vs. iPhone preferences; and the data scatter that results from everyone working on documents from a variety of locations negatively affects your organization in four main areas:

• ADMINISTRATION: With technology scatter comes an increase in the amount of time (and money) you must spend to properly manage and support these locations, platforms, devices, and data.  In an extremely scattered environment with a commitment to user support, IT administration costs can skyrocket.
• PRODUCTIVITY: With multiple people working on multiple versions of files, and employees struggling to find what they need when they need it, productivity slows.  The greater the scatter, the greater the technological friction that people must overcome in order to work together on documents, files, and data.
• SECURITY: Your sensitive data must be backed up and protected despite the fact that this data is not centralized. The risks of the data being stolen or corrupted are present at every location, within every platform.  This increases your security risks and can monumentally increase IT management costs.
• LIABILITY: With more technology scatter, you open yourself up to litigation risk.  If you are court-ordered to produce electronic documents, you must produce them, at your cost—and fast.  That’s why your organization’s ability to enforce document management and other technology centralization policies across multiple locations and platforms is essential.

Now that you know the risks, you can begin to remediate.  Below is a four-step process we recommend to (and often implement for) C-level executives facing the corporate technology scatter challenge:

1. EVALUATE. Is your technology the right technology?  Perhaps the root of your tech scatter is simply the fact that you’re not utilizing it efficiently.  Technology is a major asset, but like any other tool if it’s not used in a focused manner it becomes less of a solution and more of a problem.  Do your employees have too many devices to be effective?  Is your IT network up to date and capable of the demands you’re putting on it?  Maybe you’re spending too much time putting out small fires and keeping an unwieldy system running.  An honest evaluation of your needs and the technology that you’re using can go a long way.
2. COMPARE. Is your technology up to industry standards?  While it’s not always best to follow the herd, it’s a good idea to keep up with what comparably-sized companies in your industry are doing.  Perhaps you’re a mid-sized company that’s trying to implement a system that has way too many moving parts for your needs.  Maybe your technology’s more suitable to a company in another industry.  Being aware of what’s helping others to run efficiently and configuring it to your specific needs can boost your efficiency and make life easier.
3. REGULATE. Once you have the results of your network and systems analysis, and have compared your technology to that used in similarly-sized organizations in your industry, it is now time to set basic standards and parameters to organize the dispersion.  Figure out into which category the majority of your scatter falls (geographic, platform, or data) and then discuss your regulation options.  Will your organization be building custom software applications and intranets as collaboration platforms?  Or, will you be using software as a service over the web?  Will remote and telecommuting employees be sharing your network?  What about smart phones?  Servers?  Maybe a document management system is necessary.  Creating a plan, and clarifying and communicating that plan to employees helps to remediate your technology scatter problems.
4. LEVERAGE. Video conferencing and other collaboration technologies (from Google Docs to Skype to Salesforce.com) can help to not only manage a remote workforce, but also to help reign in some technology scatter.  Leverage the technology that has been created for this purpose to help you in this effort.

Last Word

In today's world, business may never sleep, but by taking some basic steps to reduce your technology scatter and create an integrated, organization-wide technology management strategy, you might be able to rest easy.

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