If you've made it this far in our Ultimate Guide to Technology Roadmaps, you are likely already benefiting from this powerful tool. Now it's time to leverage your Roadmap in new ways to unlock even more technology enhancements and business growth.
Expand your roadmap's creative potential.
The biggest benefit from our Technology Roadmap that we receive for our business at Net Friends is knowing what’s going on. A wide variety of people in the company are up-to-date and know what our priorities are, whether we are on or off track, and we can readily have a discussion with anyone about our technology plans. We find there are multiple uses for our Technology Roadmap, and we encourage you to explore these creative ways to leverage your Technology Roadmap.
There are many decisions you might need to make that will be far more informed with the aid of a Technology Roadmap. Having a visualization of how your technology aligns with your company’s vision will enable you to do many things, such as:
- Life Cycle Management – Use the roadmap to plan for retiring older equipment and systems so you can maintain a current, optimized set of application and infrastructure.
- Project Planning – Space out your big initiative to avoid staff burnout and too many capital investments; easier to plan your projects when you can visualize them.
- Identify What’s Missing – What technology might be required to support your future plans that you don’t already have on-hand?
- Anticipate Changes – Look ahead to when you might adopt some of the newest technology trends to see if you can envision how your business could leverage advancements to become more competitive and profitable.
- Avoid Sprawl – There are multiple software and cloud tools that can be used by your staff, creating dozens of partially used, abandoned, or siloed systems that don’t serve your core mission or increase your risk of data loss.
- What If…? – Start to explore scenarios and events that might put real stress on your Technology Roadmap and see if you can mitigate or preempt those in some way.
Even a primitive Technology Roadmap can be a powerful game-changer in any organization, as it centers discussions around getting the most out of your technology investments.
The Technology Roadmap is a tool that allows you to visualize a future enabled by productivity enhancements that are made possible through the digital transformation going on around us.
As you develop further iterations of your Technology Roadmap, you will unlock more and more of its potential. These creative uses are a part of that progression. Contact Net Friends and let us know how your IT planning has improved with the use of this tool!
You're ready to crush this! Jump around the toolkit with quick links:
- Return to the Ultimate Guide to Technology Roadmaps
- Step 1: Define Your Business Goals
- Step 2: Start Brainstorming & Creating Lists
- Step 3: Capture IT Costs & Track Duration
- Step 4: Schedule Routine Roadmap-Centric Discussions
- Step 5: Get Creative & Expand Your Roadmap (You Are Here)
