How to Minimize Business Disruption When Upgrading Tech

With technology moving at such a rapid rate these days, you can’t afford to allow your hardware and software to become old and stale. However, when you do get round to upgrading your technology, it is all too easy for it to cause business disruptions. In turn, these can be problematic by costing you potential sales and even causing your clients to look elsewhere. So, you want to make a special effort to minimize disruption as much as possible, and here are some of the ways that you can do so.

Hire the Right Tech Team

While your business relies on technology to operate effectively, this doesn’t mean that you are an expert in the field. Therefore, you need to have the best team behind you, whether through in-house staff or an outsource agency like Iconic IT. Whoever you choose to put your trust in, they need to be reliable and competent. If you are hiring someone, you need to check their references closely. If you are relying on an outsourced agency, you should get a personal recommendation if possible or review their case studies closely.

Plan and Test

When you first decide to upgrade your tech systems, this is where you need to make a plan involving how long this is going to take and when you can do it to minimize business disruption. You need to work out whether you should inform your clients to let them know about the impending disruption. Within your timetable, you also need to set aside some hours for testing. After all, you don’t want to get the system up and running, only to find that it didn’t work as well as you expected. This is the time that you can use to iron out any issues and sort them out before the big launch.

Keep Security in Mind

Online security has never been more important, and you don’t want to risk your systems going down as a result of not taking the proper precautions. While your old systems may have been protected, you need the same to be said of your newer technology too. To grant you extra peace of mind, it may be worth hiring someone to test your systems out. Some businesses even find it useful to hire ‘friendly hackers’ who attempt to hack into their systems to make sure everything is watertight.

Prepare for Future Upgrades

While it may present a challenge, you should do your best to invest in technology that it is as ‘futureproof’ as possible. While your new bit of kit may be useful now, is this still going to be the case in the next six months. If you are not sure, look at the direction of the company and how well they have done in keeping their products fresh and innovative. You do not want to waste a lot of cash upgrading to a technology that is going to become obsolete in the very near future!