Coleman Technologies Blog

Happy New Year! It’s officially that time when we all make resolutions meant to help improve ourselves, so why not include your business? Better yet, why not make business resolutions that you’re more likely to keep?

Let’s explore some of the ways that you can design your business’ resolutions to maximize the likelihood that you’ll keep them and benefit from them in the long term.

Design Your Goals Intelligently

“Work smarter, not harder.” It’s solid advice, and especially could show its utility as you try to make changes in the new calendar year. Are your processes clear, and crucially, are the outcomes they are designed to reach optimized for success?

This is where something known as SMART goals are useful. The SMART goals framework is a formula by which the most effective goals can be created, because these goals are designed to be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. What is it that you intend to accomplish, by exact guidelines, and is possible to accomplish in a set time that will ultimately benefit your business?

By framing all of your goals in this way, you can prime yourself and your team to accomplish them more effectively.

Involve Your Team

Speaking of your team, you may want to commit some focus to bringing your team more into the fold as you strategize your goals. This will help you create goals that ensure that they remain engaged and comfortable while they work.

One way to do this is to promote the idea of shared responsibility in the workplace. Try to create resolutions that everyone can take part in, working together to collaboratively accomplish a goal. For your part, you should also resolve to readily provide employees with opportunities for professional growth and development. The more your team is able to do, the more your business can do… and the more engaged your team members will be, especially when there’s a clear path for them to improve.

It also benefits you and your business to provide your team with various wellness benefits and work/life balance-based perks. Providing opportunities to your team will make them more likely to stick around and enjoy them.

Break Down Your Goals into Steps

So, you’ve figured out a goal.

Now what?

While having a goal is an important part of improving your business, it’s only going to get you so far without a strategy that helps you progress toward that goal. Analyzing your objectives and determining how to accomplish them will make it easier to do so.

Try subdividing some of these larger tasks into their smaller parts, making an overwhelming prospect much more manageable and approachable. This also makes it easier to adjust different parts of your plan to improve the outcome that results from it.

Keep Track of Your Progress

On the topic of adjusting your strategies over time, it is much easier to do so when you have historical data to rely on. Make sure that you are keeping records that describe the progress you’ve made and the challenges you’ve encountered. Having this information will put you in a better position to improve your overall performance. Plus, it enables you to keep up your team’s motivation by celebrating the successes this data brings to light.

It also helps to seek out feedback from various parties in order to get the benefit of numerous perspectives. One person’s role—for instance, your own—may not give you a critical insight that strongly impacts the end result of your efforts. Crowdsourcing viewpoints from your team can give you a fuller, more accurate picture of whatever it is you are trying to accomplish, allowing you to more effectively make any changes or improvements.

Use Technology that Supports Your Goals

When you consider that Coleman Technologies is one of the most dedicated managed service providers in British Columbia, it was only a matter of time before we referred to your business’ IT. However, that doesn’t make it any less true that utilizing the right technology makes it far easier to accomplish your objectives, including those related to your New Year’s resolution.

You wouldn’t use a hammer to measure how big a piece of furniture was any more than you would use a tape measure to set some nails. The same goes for the information technology that your business puts to use—matching its purpose to the objective you’re trying to meet will make your job (and by extension, your life) much simpler.

We Can Empower Your Business Resolutions with Our IT Services

Let’s face it: New Year’s resolutions are hard to stick to. Fortunately, you don’t have to commit to your business’ new strategies without help. Coleman Technologies can be there to provide the IT services and solutions that can help with all of the steps we mentioned here, as well as any others your business may require. Give us a call at (604) 513-9428 to learn more.

Businesses of every size need to prioritize their security. This fact has not changed and will not change anytime soon. What has changed, however, are the recommended ways to approach this security.

Today, we wanted to review the history of today’s predominant cybersecurity advice and explore how the zero-trust security model applies.

Meet John Kindervag, the Godfather of Zero Trust

Once an apprentice to be a typewriter repair specialist before transitioning into the role of broadcast engineer and then diving into the world of computer animation (and building his own high-end computers in his spare time), Kindervag ultimately credits the video game Doom for his interest in networking.

How a Game Inspired Today’s Most Effective Network Security Strategy

Under the pretense of using it to transfer animated files (which were too large to be shared in this way at the time), Kindervag convinced his bosses to allow him to build an ethernet network to more effectively support the after-hours multiplayer LAN (local area network) parties that were held in the office.

He wasn’t the only one, by the way… many advancements in computing and networking were initially made in the interest of playing Doom (no word on whether they were primarily using it to play the cooperative multiplayer campaign or the player versus player deathmatch mode).

However, as he worked on these networks, Kindervag realized they were inherently insecure, with little attention paid to their security in favor of routing and switching. With the only protection being a firewall to keep threats out, there was little stopping users from removing data from the network. The trusted, internal network that the business maintained could easily allow data to be shared to an untrusted, external network… like the Internet.

John saw this as “insane”—his word for it—and concluded that all interfaces should have zero inherent trust. Hence, the zero-trust framework.

How Zero-Trust Works

To create a zero-trust system, there are five critical steps that an organization must take:

Step One: Defining the Protect Surface
As Kindervag puts it, “Zero Trust inverts the traditional problems of cybersecurity. Instead of focusing on what's attacking you, it focuses on what I call the Protect Surface. What do I need to protect?”

In other words, you need to identify all the data you have that needs to be protected, whatever form that data takes. Only then will you know the scope of your data protection needs and be able to cover them adequately.

Step Two: Mapping Your Data
So, once you know what data you possess, you need to fully understand how the rest of your business and its IT infrastructure interact with it. Which users need access to what, which applications regularly access this data, and how is your infrastructure set up to store and transfer it? This information is critical to the next step.

Step Three: Designing an Architectural Framework
With all these insights in mind, you must then create a framework that meets all of the above needs and requirements, explicitly considering your IT infrastructure and its construction. While some frameworks may ultimately look similar, any zero-trust strategy needs to be customized to the individual business—hence, all the audits and mapping.

Step Four: Creating Your Zero-Trust Policies
With your network designed to be more security-focused, you need to identify and dictate who can access what, how and when they can, from where, and for which purpose. This goes for every user, role, device, and network, as any of these could be used to access information without authorization.

Step Five: Monitoring and Enforcing Compliance
Finally, you’ll want to actively monitor your network to identify any oversights or loopholes in your zero-trust implementation. This will allow you to make corrections that resolve security issues and potentially optimize your business network's performance.

Some Pieces of Advice from Kindervag

First and foremost, Kindervag reminds us all that security issues like ransomware and other attacks—the kind that zero-trust actively helps mitigate—are not prejudiced against any kind or size of business. As a result, everyone is a target, and the impacts of a cyberattack can easily have severe real-world repercussions in our highly digitized society… and not always the kind you might expect. 

Kindervag refers to a ransomware attack targeting a Swiss Alps dairy farmer and his milking machines. While the farmer could still manually collect milk from his livestock, he couldn’t access the telemetric health data that may have prevented one of his cows from dying.

Emotional losses from losing an animal aside, that’s potentially a few hundred dollars of profit each year, just gone.

Kindervag also points out that many large businesses are still about as prepared as this farmer was to deal with ransomware, even though computer systems and their processes directly impact a modern business’ success. Therefore, according to Kindervag, the most intelligent and cost-effective approach is to be proactive in fighting cybersecurity threats.

We Agree, and We Can Help

If you’d like advice and assistance in keeping your business secure and productive in the face of modern cybersecurity issues, call Coleman Technologies at (604) 513-9428 to find out what needs to be done to implement a zero-trust approach.

If you truly want to run your business effectively, it all starts with understanding how its costs break down. If you are armed with this knowledge, you can make better decisions about solution procurement and operations management. Let’s examine how you can cut costs without harming your business in the process.

Outsourcing Can Help

Outsourcing is often misunderstood, but it is an incredibly powerful tool to control your costs and improve operations. If you take part of your business that is costly to run normally, then outsource it to a provider, you get more stable costs and expertise that you might not normally be able to leverage.

Businesses have all sorts of outsourcing options these days, including gig workers or managed service providers. You can outsource help desks for support, or you can outsource recruitment and payroll. The sky's the limit, so to speak; if you can imagine it, you can probably outsource it, provided you find an appropriate vendor.

Data Allows for Better Decision-Making

The more data your business has, the more tools and resources it has at its disposal to enable better decision-making. You can look at data to learn about what has worked well in the past, what could work well in the future, and what needs to be addressed immediately. Data is key to the many types of initiatives you might have planned for the future.

Data analytics can give your business key insights into how it can be more efficient with sales, marketing, operational processes, and so on. It can help you build better consumer experiences and customer relationships, something which can increase revenue and give you more resources to work with in the future.

Keep Flexibility in Mind

You can provide greater value to your employees by keeping flexibility at the top of your mind. This means giving them tools to communicate and be productive whether they are in the office or on the move, and thanks to cloud-based resources and solutions, you can do this easily and efficiently.

Another way you can innovate and keep things flexible is through the use of artificial intelligence technology. An AI chatbot, for example, can free up employees for other tasks, focusing instead on tasks that generate revenue.

Coleman Technologies can help your business be more cost-effective and productive at the same time. To learn more, reach out to us at (604) 513-9428.

It is a legitimate question whether something is actually art if it isn’t created by a human being. That’s before you are exposed to it, however. In fact, an AI created a piece of art that was crowned the winner at the Colorado State Fair. Let’s take a look at AI art in the context of this competition.

Let’s dive in.

Are AI-Generated Images Art?

At the Colorado State Fair, there is a fine arts competition where Josh Allen won the first place prize in Digital Arts/Digitally Manipulated Photography for his image, “Théåtre D'opéra Spatial.” When Allen provided a glimpse into his process via Discord, however, he was met with scrutiny. He used an image synthesis model called Midjourney to create the image.

As Allen said in his Discord post, he “...created 100s of images using it, and after many weeks of fine tuning and curating my gens, I chose my top 3 and had them printed on canvas after upscaling with Gigapixel A.I.” As he reports, he “could not be more excited” that his “favorite piece” ultimately won.

The rest of the community was a bit more critical of Allen’s choice. The image was produced with little actual hands-on work from Allen. Instead, it was built using the input that he plugged into the Midjourney platform. Allen wrote in his official submission, “I generate images with MJ, do passes with Photoshop, and upscale with GigaPixel,” and even labeled his piece with “Jason Allen via Midjourney.”

As you might not be surprised to hear, people have opinions on this topic, and many of these opinions cannot in good conscience be shared here. Still, there are many who believe that AI-generated art signifies the “death of artistry” and wonder “if creative jobs aren’t safe from machines, then even high-skilled jobs are in danger of becoming obsolete [sic] What will we have then?”

Art is Created and Judged In Accordance with the Technology of the Time

We understand why this has people concerned, but the fact remains that the tools we use today are simply taken for granted. An artist named Rhea Edge listed tools, techniques, and artists that use them, as well as when the tools were introduced, then shows that these tools also were not received well at the time.

In particular, Edge discusses the development of the camera obscura, a darkened room with a small hole in one side that allowed images to be projected onto a wall. This photography went on to inspire innovations in the art that are seen in modern day photography at large. Tubed paint was also a problematic topic due to artists not mixing their own paints. Artists were criticized right up until the 1970s and 1980s for these practices.

Edge also points out that art tends to change over time, highlighting how long it took the Impressionist painting style to really become an established style in the art world.

One other artist named Brian Simpson examines technology’s role in the development of art. He indicates that miniature portraits were essentially cut out entirely by the advent of photography. Simpson is also an advocate for Allen’s AI-produced artwork.

“There is a mind behind it. The mind is deciding I want this image. And with this image, this is the word I want to use,” Simpson said, going on to reflect on how Allen produced 40 images, ultimately choosing the ones he submitted.

“You can argue that choice and self-curation is part of the art process,” said Simpson.

This statement makes it clear that the current state of image creation and artwork still involves much human interaction, especially to achieve outstanding results like with Allen’s piece. How long this remains the case, however, is yet to be determined.

What are your thoughts on AI-generated artwork? Do you have any strong opinions on this topic? Be sure to share them in the comments below—and remember that AI is very well-established in the business world, so consider implementing it for your own company’s needs!

The entire purpose of modern IT is to improve the processes that work requires us to do. Today, we wanted to address a few business priorities—productivity, cybersecurity, and accessibility—that the right tech can help you accomplish, explicitly exploring how different tools can contribute to your success.

Technology Can Kickstart Productivity

Of all business metrics, productivity is arguably the most focused on nowadays. Fortunately, implementing modern tools can significantly improve your chances of running a productive business. For instance…

Automation

How many tasks must be completed but consistently take considerable time without offering your business much practical value? The fact that such tasks interfere with your profit-generating activities puts them in direct opposition to your productivity. However, implementing automation and allowing these labor-intensive but straightforward tasks to run independently in the background can give your team members a lot of time to commit to profit-generating or business-advancing efforts.

Collaboration

There’s a reason that people say “let’s put our heads together” or that “many hands make light work.” Collaborating on any goal can very easily reduce the time it takes, and many modern technology platforms are designed with this in mind. Microsoft and Google each offer entire suites of software built with collaboration as a priority, which means embracing these capabilities is simpler and more accessible than ever.

Data Management and Analytics

Collecting and analyzing the data your business generates throughout its operations empowers you to make better and wiser decisions for your company. Modern IT tools can collect and process this immense amount of information, identifying promising patterns and highlighting what you can accomplish much more quickly than you could otherwise.

Cybersecurity is Simpler with Modern Protections

Security, as the past few decades of near-constant cyberthreats and data breaches should have taught us all, is critical for businesses of all sizes to get right. While this is far from an inclusive list, the following are vital elements of proper cybersecurity preparedness.

Advanced Threat Protection

As a blanket term encompassing various security tools, advanced threat protection requires a business to adopt safeguards like antivirus, firewalls, and threat-detection systems. Doing so will help eliminate a vast majority of the threats that you would otherwise face, significantly lowering the likelihood of your team encountering an issue nearly as often.

Data Encryption

With data being so readily targeted by threats, the safe option is to take precautions to mitigate the damage that stolen data can cause. Encryption is one such precaution.

By scrambling the data to anyone that doesn’t have the proper credentials to access it, encryption helps preserve the privacy of any data that might be breached and limits the damage done. While the breach is still not acceptable and needs to be addressed, encryption allows you to focus your energy on resolving the problem.

Employee Training and Awareness

One of the most persistent cybersecurity threats comes from inside the house in the form of your employees because they can very easily serve as a vulnerability. This makes it crucial that your team is aware of the threats they’ll face and are ready to spot them, which investing in employee training will help. Be sure you also run simulated attacks to evaluate how well this training works and to catch potential weaknesses in your defenses.

Today’s Tools Offer Enhanced Accessibility

While the workplace was once firmly defined as the office where business took place, modern technologies allow work to be done effectively anywhere someone can access the Internet. The following technologies are instrumental for this to happen productively and securely.

Cloud

The cloud can support a wide range of business needs, from storage space to software delivery and many others, simply because it’s just borrowed (or, more accurately, rented) computing hardware that someone else maintains on your behalf. That, paired with the relative affordability and accessibility the cloud provides, makes it a no-brainer for businesses to use the cloud, especially to support remote work.

Virtual Private Networks

When considering remote work, however, you need to take security even more seriously. It’s one thing for your team to access sensitive data from within your protected and secured network, and it’s quite another for them to do so from some airport, coffee shop, or even home network with a password like “locationnameWificode.”

One way you can work around this is by implementing a tool called a virtual private network, or VPN. You may have heard of them in ads or YouTube sponsorships as a means of accessing geo-protected streaming content from the comfort of your home. In the business world, their utility is far greater. Business-grade VPNs allow remote workers to securely access data you have stored on-site, as the VPN creates an encrypted bridge between their device and your storage hardware.

Remote Troubleshooting

We must also address the ever-present fact that IT issues happen constantly, regardless of whether someone works in an office or outside its walls. This makes it essential for modern businesses to have some form of remote support available to perform remote monitoring and maintenance on their IT infrastructure and help employees efficiently address any issues they encounter. Today’s technology makes this kind of support-from-a-distance possible, whether it is performed by an in-house IT department or an outsourced provider.

We Can Be the Outsourced Provider to Assist With All of This…

…and, frankly, a lot more. Reach out to us at (604) 513-9428 to inquire about any or all of the above and learn more about what we can do for your business.

Before we discuss what the last decade brought us, I wanted to remind everyone just how limitless innovations are. Many years ago, many of these inventions or technologies seemed unrealistic for the times.

Let’s go through the past decade’s biggest hits, as well as what we might see in years to come.

2010: When Innovation Thrived

While many technologies were introduced in the 2000s, the 2010s saw these technologies used in bigger, more innovative ways. Let’s take a brief look at the past ten years and what improvements we saw.

4G

While 4G was actually first developed in 2009, but primarily spreading in the early 2010s, 4G wireless changed the capabilities of wireless data transmission. As a result, further innovations were made, encouraging (and sometimes forcing) technologies to improve. The companies that worked in real-time and heavily depended on application deployment were suddenly given the tools they needed to really take root. Furthermore, 4G was responsible for the viability of many of today’s biggest players, including Spotify, Instagram, Uber, and Snapchat - among many others.

Apple iPad

Can you believe that the iPad has only been around for about a decade? It was the first of many mass-produced consumer tablets, and it took other companies a few years to catch up as they followed Apple’s lead. Powered by iOS, and featuring a large screen, the explosive initial sales of the iPad cemented the tablet’s reputation as a useful device, both at home and in the workplace.

IPv6

In June of 2012, the longstanding wireless networking standard was upgraded for the first time in years. This sixth standard allowed a new age of connectivity, permitting a far larger number of devices to be connected to the Internet.

Chromecast

As we suggested in the section on 4G, streaming was growing in popularity, and it is safe to say that the first Chromecast was partially responsible for that. While it may seem practically ubiquitous today, integrated casting was revolutionary upon its release… and in many ways, it changed how businesses could communicate ideas. Conference rooms everywhere are now equipped to work with this (or similar) technologies.

Virtual Assistants

Today, every major technology brand has its own take on the virtual assistant. Apple has the OG - Siri - while Microsoft has Cortana, Google has its Google Assistant, Amazon has Alexa, and Samsung has Bixby. As such, the development of this technology spurred a new competitive spirit among these rivals, to the benefit of the user. With all of these companies working to create advanced, better assistants to sway consumers, machine learning has improved exponentially through these efforts.

USB-C

Despite largely flying under the radar, one of the most impactful advancements of the decade is the development of the USB Type C connector. With the exception of Apple, it has been accepted as the industry’s standard connection for power and data transmission, and can therefore be found on most post-2015 devices.

Windows 10

As they attempted to put together a mobile OS, and their redesigned Windows 8.1 OS failing to replace the aging Windows 7, Windows 10 was developed to standardize the Windows experience and modernize it for longevity. Now, Windows 10 has been established as the standard, running on 64 percent of all PCs in existence, a number that will grow even higher as Windows 7 is finally put out to pasture.

2020: When Things Will Thrive

While there is an argument that, technically speaking, the Internet of Things is more of a 2010s development, the 2020s are poised to be the decade that Internet-connected devices are truly viable tools, with the necessary integrations, functionality, and (most critically) security finally in place. This is predicted much for the same reason that mobile technology took off last decade - the fact that wireless networks improved. 

Frankly, there’s so much more we have yet to accomplish, as the near future is poised to turn what was very recently science fiction into fact. For instance, the next 10 years will likely see the following technologies come more into the mainstream:

5G Connectivity

With certain areas currently rolling out the 5G wireless standard, and more guaranteed to follow, there is hope of a fundamental shift in how people can use their technology. As if today’s networks weren’t already burdened by our data demands, we are only increasing these demands as time passes. However, 5G potentially promises a variety of benefits - including ubiquitous access, powered by broadcast sites that focus on delivering performance to each user rather than to a given neighborhood. Today’s 5G users have experienced speeds measured in gigabits, so just imagine this capability spreading.

Artificial Intelligence

While the phrase “artificial intelligence” has been somewhat inflated by popular culture, the more practical use of artificial intelligence is slated to increase by a significant amount in the 2020s. Today, neural networks are already in use as a means to recognize data patterns, assisting in automation processes. With the amount of data increasing exponentially, these neural networks are bound to see exponential benefits, and we will be able to put AI to use in more complex and dynamic applications.

The IoT

Like we said, the Internet of Things is only going to grow as time passes, and the many technologies and solutions that are included under this umbrella term will finally have the wireless capabilities needed to make a real impact. Cities will be made smart, using AI to increase the efficiency of crucial services and eliminate waste. Driverless cars will make commuting and traveling safer, and crucial systems in finance, healthcare, and infrastructure will be improved.

Mixed Reality

There has been a notable trend toward increasing how immersive our technology is, and that will culminate in something known as mixed reality. As the predicted replacement to today’s mobile platforms, MR would provide interactive overlays in real-time for all kinds of applications, ultimately reducing data strains. As a result, we could see a variety of applications be completely revolutionized, including education, entertainment, and social interaction.

Just as it did throughout the last decade, technology is sure to transform throughout the coming one. What innovations do you hope to see? Let us know in the comments!

Do you ever think about how incredible technology is? In a world where it’s easy to take advantage of technology and devices that were practically inconceivable just a few short decades ago, it’s really amazing to just look at how far we’ve come, and how something so small can fit so much information.

Breaking Down What Data Actually Is

Let’s go back to before there were modern computers and smartphones. The prominent form of data storage throughout the centuries has been the book.

A typical novel has somewhere between 60,000 and 110,000 words (unless you are reading something by Brandon Sanderson—his novels tend to be three or four times that). 

How much data is that though? If you want to parse this down into smaller numbers, we can look at one of the most common forms of bite-sized information on the planet, the text message.

A text message has a maximum length of 160 characters. You can usually squeeze 1-3 sentences into that on average. Characters in the English language are 7-bits. A bit is represented by a 1 or a 0. The letter “A” is translated to 01000001, and “B” is 01000010. We’ll get back to this shortly.

A text message can contain a maximum of 160 characters, or 1120 bits (1120 ones and zeroes). There are 8 bits in a byte, which means a text message is 140 bytes.

There are 1,000,000 bytes in 1 Megabyte. Figure that the average word is around five characters, so a novel could have somewhere between 300,000 and 550,000 characters

Take 550,000 characters and multiply that by 7 (the number of bits in a character) and then divide the result by 8 (the number of bits in a byte) and you’ll get 481,250 bytes, or 0.48125 Megabytes.

That means a book on the larger side of things is technically around half a Megabyte of information. Once you add some of the hidden meta information, the cover, and some other data, a typical ebook sits around 1 Megabyte. If there are illustrations or images, then there is a lot more to calculate, so we’ll just assume that we are dealing with text for this thought experiment. 

How Much Data Does a Library Hold?

Many books are much larger than the average novel, considering that there are textbooks, encyclopedias, dictionaries, massive reference books, and a lot of other larger format texts out there. Plus, it’s easier to work with round numbers, so let’s just assume that on average, a book rounds out to about 1 Megabyte.

A typical library tends to hold somewhere between 5,000 and 500,000 books. The world’s biggest libraries tend to put their book counts in the millions. The US Library of Congress holds more than 51 million books, and 75 million manuscripts, plus millions and millions of other items.

Let’s assume those 51 million books are all text. How much data would that actually be?

51 million Megabytes is 51 thousand Gigabytes, which translates to 51 Terabytes. It’s pretty common to buy 1 or 2 Terabyte drives for a home PC, so if you were conservative about your data, you could easily fit the entire Library of Congress book library in a pretty small office with 25 or so computers. Of course, you could just put multiple 2 TB drives into your workstations and store the entire Library of Congress on fewer machines too, or build a media server with an array of high-capacity drives… you get the idea.

We’re not quite to the point where a mobile device can hold that much information, but we’re getting there.

Keep in mind, this is just assuming we are taking the text. If instead, you wanted to scan every single page as a grey-scale image, you would be looking at an average size of around 8 Megabytes per book, so it would take about 408 Terabytes to store the Library of Congress. At that point, you’d be looking at a large rack-mounted device or a very small section of a data center.

How Much Data Does Your Organization Produce?

We’re going to make this a two-part blog since there is still a lot more to talk about! Next time, we’ll break down how much data human beings have ever produced, how much data you can fit into the palm of your hand, and more! Be sure to subscribe and bookmark our blog and keep coming back for more!

Change is inevitable, especially in the dynamic world of business, where it is the driving force behind growth and innovation. Yet managing change can be a daunting task. It requires strategic planning, effective communication, and strong leadership.

This is where change management optimization comes into play. It's about refining your approach to change, making it more efficient and successful… particularly when it involves your IT and related processes.

Let’s explore the world of change management optimization to understand its significance, IT's role, and leadership's importance in driving change. By doing so, we’ll be able to hammer out a strategy that will ensure that your approach to change is well-matched to your business goals.

What is Change Management, and Why Does It Matter?

In essence, change management is the process required to ensure the success of any movement from one status quo to another. If you want your business to grow and adapt to changing circumstances over time, some aspects of change management will need to be incorporated into your operations.

To be absolutely clear, the nature of business today effectively guarantees that an organization that doesn’t invest time and energy into change management will ultimately slip behind its competition. It also risks internal strife, operational confusion, and hindered productivity.

However, successfully implementing change management can have some serious benefits:

• It helps make the entire process smoother and more likely to succeed.
• It helps reduce the negative impacts of change on your team members.
• It helps maintain communication and collaboration throughout the process.
• It helps make future changes easier for your team to adapt to and accept.

Innovating on Your IT is Important to Your Change Management Efforts

Unsurprisingly, putting the right technology tools in place makes change and change management much easier and can inspire more changes later. In this way, it isn’t unreasonable to say that any successful change management relies very much on having modern technology at your disposal, while implementing this technology will also require change management.

How to Match Change Management to Your Business Goals

Every business process is closely integrated with every other, so change management should run in tandem with the entire organization's objectives. What changes can you make that will advance your progress toward these objectives? Adopting this focus can make your change management efforts more effective.

You must also communicate the benefits of this change and the process to come with your entire team. Informing your team and answering questions also helps smooth the transition and keep everyone on track, engaged, and on board.

What Can Your IT Do to Boost Your Change Management Efforts?

You can use your technology to push your change management towards optimization in a few ways. For instance:

• Project management software can keep everyone on task as changes are implemented.
• Communication tools can smooth over potential pitfalls by ensuring everyone has the information needed when they need it.
• Data analytics can help you make better choices in directing your changes.
• Training platforms can make the transition easier for your team as they adopt new processes.

Change Management Should be an Ongoing Process

Technology is always changing, so change management is something that you always need to pursue. Don’t stop evaluating and improving your business routines and procedures, taking the time to evaluate your success based on the appropriate key performance indicators.

When planning your future changes, it never hurts to look back and evaluate what worked well in the past, either, as these trends can help inform your choices. Doing so can make your efforts more successful for your business.

The long and the short is that change management is critical for a business seeking to grow, and so it pays to invest in IT that can help you optimize your efforts. Coleman Technologies is here to help you do so.

Interested in learning more about the benefits of our managed IT services? Give us a call at (604) 513-9428.