Right now, it’s simple for businesses to enter survival mode. Consumer demand is preparing for the full effects of the cost of living problem, supply chains are groaning from inflationary and worker constraints, and climate change is no longer a distant threat, all while geopolitical maneuvers are frightening markets virtually every day. You are in an unpredictably uncertain time, having strong technology skill becomes even more crucial.
Business executives could be tempted to protect themselves and weather the storm. Stop pursuing any growth goals and hold onto what you have until conditions improve. It makes sense to consider significant investments to be risky today. But business success depends on always surpassing the competitors. Stopping sends you on a course that you might never be able to reverse.
There is a middle ground where you don’t have to stop or spend money to get out of trouble. You might find that you have what you need if you take a look at what you already have.
Look at the schools for a recent lesson on how to achieve this. Education continued even after schools were forced to close because of COVID-19. Schools evaluated their resources, including laptops, communication tools, and a community of receptive parents. Mass homeschooling appeared out of nowhere.
Knowing what you have is the first step in maximizing its worth, including Technology Skill.
Start by performing a software and technology skill audit. Red Hat doesn’t always ask the most of our technology in good times. While its other capabilities are inactive, they purchase it and use it to complete a task. The time has come to maximize everything you have already paid for.
Do you know what additional capabilities IT comes with if you subscribe to it, possibly as a cloud service? The benefits of your membership could—should—include technical support, security updates, business consulting, education and training, networking, analytics, and input into a vendor’s product roadmap.
These run the risk of being ignored and dismissed as simply decorative extras. However, utilizing them might offer solutions for improving your tech stack and managing your IT more affordably. According to an IDC report of the value of our subscriptions, companies that use Red Hat saw a reduction in their three-year operational costs of 35%, a 38% increase in the efficiency of their IT infrastructure teams, and a 21% increase in productivity from their development teams.
Then, consider your people. Job titles might cause companies to become overly focused. They just give you a portion of the story—what a person is doing, as opposed to what they could be capable of doing. Having a technology skill audit is a more useful exercise than reducing roles. It always reveals talent you didn’t know you had and that can be redeployed to tasks that have grown more important, in my experience.
The ecosystem is the next factor. Perhaps you’re not even aware that you belong to one. But stop to analyze all the businesses you touch, including your partners in technology, suppliers, agencies, and customers. There’s a good chance that they share your pressures. Make use of these connections. You invite assistance from others by reaching out and expressing your desire to assist. Better contract terms, product development input, or simply another set of eyes on the difficulties you confront could be the reward. Working together produces amazing results.
Running open-source software in an organization with an open culture makes all of this simpler. An open-source stack is flexible, allowing the capacity to quickly switch between important infrastructure setups and investigate product software integrations. Change and collaboration are ideals that are “business as usual” in an open culture. Communities are not abstract ideas; rather, they are highly organized ecosystems with clear engagement processes.
Contrast this with a company established on rigid, proprietary technology, where secrecy is the default setting and change is limited by top-down decisions. One model is comparable to reversing an oil tanker in a storm, while the other is similar to a swimmer changing lanes in calm seas.
92% of IT leaders believe that corporate open-source solutions were important in resolving their COVID-related issues. Companies that invested in open-source technology and the culture that goes with it were better prepared for the challenging times they have just encountered.
The challenges that businesses face are wide and complex. Businesses are recently challenged by the worst global financial crisis since the Great Depression. More recently, COVID-19 sprang out of nowhere and completely changed how you see the world. The lesson is to always expect the unexpected, so prepare and develop today for the agility you will eventually need. Add in “local” shocks—governments dissolving, currencies crashing, floods and wildfires raging—and the lesson is to always expect the unexpected.
Here at CourseMonster, we know how hard it may be to find the right time and funds for training. We provide effective training programs that enable you to select the training option that best meets the demands of your company.
For more information, please get in touch with one of our course advisers today or contact us at training@coursemonster.com