STRATEGY
Even you need a Technology Strategy
22 APRIL 2025 |
MARKUS VAN AARDT
STRATEGY FOUNDATIONAL DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION MODERNISATION ARCHITECTURE BUSINESS ALIGNMENT
If you’re running a mid-tier business - say, a technology startup, a healthcare provider, or a financial services firm - you know growth isn’t just about hustling harder. It’s about working smarter, and that’s where a solid technology strategy comes in. Think of it as your GPS for navigating the digital jungle, aligning your technologies with your business goals, modernizing your operations, and future-proofing your company against whatever’s around the corner. Without one, you’re basically driving blind, wasting time, effort and money on systems that don’t deliver. Allow me to break down why a technology strategy is a game-changer for growing businesses like yours.
Strategy development is a bottom-up affair
A Technology Strategy is like building a house - you need a solid plan that ties your technology to your business goals, keeping you nimble and ahead of the market. It follows a layered approach, with three key levels that work together: foundational and critical, strategic and enabling, and advanced and outcome-driven. Picture it as a brick wall, where each part builds on the last, guiding you from setting up the basics to sparking game-changing innovation. This ensures every technology move you make - whether it’s picking systems or chasing new trends - fits your big picture and keeps you ready for whatever comes next.
At the bottom, the foundational and critical capabilities form the bedrock: aligning technology with your business, checking what you have, designing solid systems, locking down security, and sketching out a clear vision. Without this, you are flying blind. Then, the strategic and enabling layer adds muscle to the execution - imagine budgeting, data plans, skilling up your team, picking the right vendors, and smoothing out change so everyone is on board. At the top, the advanced and outcome-driven layer is where innovation happens: tracking success with clear metrics and diving into market-leading technology (like AI) to stand out and deliver real results. It is a formal model (or blueprint) that ties everything together, turning your technology investments and innovations into a powerhouse for growth.
Once you understand this, you will see why no two companies could ever have the same Technology Strategy. Just as every human being have a unique fingerprint, so too every company will have its own distinct way to use and improve itself through the use and optimisation technology. Do not fall for the Hocus Pocus of big-4 strategy playbooks before you fully understand this.
Aligning Technology with Your Business Goals
First things first: your technology needs to align to your business. A technology strategy starts by synchronising your systems with what you’re trying to achieve - whether it’s boosting revenue, cutting costs, or wowing customers. It’s about auditing what you’ve got, ditching what’s dragging you down, and building a foundation that supports growth. No fluff, just results.
Modernizing Through Digital Transformation
Now, let’s talk modernisation. Growing businesses can’t afford to be stuck with clunky, 90s-era systems, or worse - a patchwork of applications and systems that don’t talk to each other. A technology strategy pushes digital transformation, upgrading your technology stack to be agile and efficient. This means cloud solutions (whether on the AWS, Azure or just your own on-premise cloud platform), data analytics, or even AI to make smarter decisions. It’s not about going digital for the sake of it; it’s about making your business leaner and meaner.
Future-Proofing for What Comes Next
Here’s the big one: a technology strategy keeps you ready for tomorrow. Markets shift, technology evolves, and customer expectations skyrocket. By building a roadmap that balances quick wins with long-term bets—like piloting AI or strengthening cybersecurity, you stay ahead of the curve. It’s about making your business not just survive but thrive, no matter what’s coming.
The Bottom Line
For mid-tier businesses, a technology strategy isn’t a luxury - it’s your ticket to growth. It aligns your technology with your vision, modernizes your operations, and future-proofs your company in a world that doesn’t slow down. At Obsidian Information Technologies, we craft strategies that cut through the noise, delivering real impact without the Big 4 price tag or buying into the dangerous thud factor. Want to get your technology working as hard as you do? Let’s chat.
Your next step
It is better to partner with a niche technology consultancy that intimately understands your world than try to adopt a strategy built for a competitor orders of magnitude bigger than your own organisation. It's all about the fit, partner for the long haul.
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