How to avoid disruption from loss of technical expertise

We continue our blog series on the importance of business continuity by recognizing how the loss of technical expertise can have a potentially damaging impact on organizations with legacy IT applications.

Over time, each organization builds an enterprise ecosystem that uniquely addresses its needs. This is the natural progression of enterprise business solutions as technology and tools advance. The challenge emerges when only a handful of people understand how to manage and maintain that system successfully and perhaps only one individual truly understands the complete picture. As these enterprise solutions and corresponding data are the very core of the business, any scenario that puts it at risk is dangerous.

For many organizations, the realization that your go-to people, those who truly understand all the nuances in your enterprise ecosystem, are no longer there comes too late. Whether this loss comes through resignation, retirement, health issues, or merger and acquisition, you will need to find replacements. How can your organization ensure the continuity of day-to-day operations with the potential loss of technical expertise?

One of the ways to mitigate this risk is to accelerate cloud migration. With a shift to the cloud, your organization is supported by solutions that are continuously updated, and by investment in IT personnel that would be difficult for some of the largest organizations to match. A small army is dedicated to monitoring your organization’s applications and data to ensure they are optimized and protected.

A recent CIO tech priorities survey by IDG showed that “despite increased budgets and interest in new technologies that can positively impact business in the future, organizations still face familiar challenges to adoption. The top challenges that IT leaders encounter are lack of sufficient budget (48%), lack of staff (46%), and lack of skill sets (42%).” By shifting the responsibility of managing and maintaining your critical IT solutions over to a cloud provider with modern applications, your organization can create an opportunity to reset expectations and priorities for your IT staff.

Babbitt Chainwheels is a manufacturer and distributor who relied on a legacy ERP for years. While the organization faced a number of business challenges, one urgent situation was the impending retirement of its IT staff. To protect and grow their business, they invested in a cloud solution that would relieve much of that burden.

If you find the themes covered in this blog post relevant to your business, we invite you to download this eBook on how to avoid six business-damaging scenarios caused by outdated IT systems.

In the next blog, we look at the effect of mergers and acquisitions on on-premises infrastructure and how moving to the cloud can help meet the goals of the M&A activity.