by Scott Jack
Content Contributor, E-N Computers
7+ years experience in healthcare IT and tech support.
For many organizations, there’s a gap between business and technology. Closing the gap isn’t always easy, because it can feel like the business-minded people and the tech-minded people speak entirely different languages. The end result is that business processes are sub-optimal, technology is under-utilized, and everyone is frustrated.
It doesn’t have to be that way. You can bring business and technology together to the benefit of your team, your customers, and your bottom line. The first step is to assess your situation through a Business Improvement Review.
QUICK ANSWER:
What is a Business Improvement Review?
A BIR is a free, 45–minute meeting we offer to potential clients. It is designed to help you measure how well technology is integrated in your business, both operationally and strategically. It also helps identify opportunities for improvement.
What is a Business Improvement Review?
The Business Improvement Review is a free, 45-minute block of time for our potential clients to meet with a trained digital advisor, with the purpose of identifying how technology currently fits into your business operations and strategy — and where you have opportunities to further integrate technology and processes. Operations refers to what tech you are using and how, what you need to stay functional, and what kind of tech budget you need. Strategy looks at whether your current tech is adequate to meet your needs and goals.
If you are interested in our services or are thinking about how to improve your business IT, this meeting is for you. You can book a Business Improvement review here. It’s also the meeting we offer after you’ve taken our IT Maturity Self-Assessment (linked at the end of many of our posts).
Active clients enjoy a recurring Executive Business Review that serves a similar purpose: to monitor how well technology is serving your business and seek opportunities to improve.
What are the benefits?
Let’s start with a story from our founder, Ian. He was talking with a dentist about the use of technology in their practice. The dentist said, “You know, the next big thing is these digital X-rays.” Well, that was a surprise, because Ian had already converted dozens of practices to digital X-rays — nearly 15 years earlier! Even though the dentist was practicing daily, he wasn’t up to date with his industry’s technology trends.
It’s understandable why this happens. Technology is not usually seen as a core business function. For the dentist, as long as he was able to take X-rays, his existing setup was sufficient. As long as his processes worked within his four walls, he did not have an urgent need to update them. But there’s a problem with this approach.
Over time, failure to stay up-to-date impacts the competitiveness of your business. Technology is a differentiator and competitive advantage against businesses that are slower to progress. Properly applied, it can simplify processes and multiply the efficiency of your staff.
While you can self-assess using the points in the previous section, there is a key benefit of doing the BIR with a trained digital advisor: you get an experienced outsider’s look at your organization. Your digital advisor will take their years of IT experience from a variety of roles and businesses, as well as their knowledge of current trends, and apply it to your business. Instead of trying to guess what you should be doing, you will gain insight and guidance on the opportunities and concrete next steps ahead of you.
Who should participate?
Because a business improvement review looks at how technology serves your business operations and strategy, the best person to participate:
- is an organization leader that oversees IT,
- understands the business, including the opportunities and challenges you face, and
- is willing and able to have an open and honest conversation.
People best suited to participate in a business improvement review include an office manager, CFO, CEO, COO, or owner/founder. An IT leader with decision-making authority can also be a good fit. They will meet with a digital advisor: an IT veteran with experience in multiple roles across a variety of businesses, who is trained to identify process inefficiencies and ways that technology can be used to improve business functions. At ENC, our digital advisors are some of our most senior IT professionals.
There are two key situations where a BIR is ineffective. The first is when it’s attended only by an IT professional with limited authority and limited knowledge of the business. Second is when it’s attended by the organization leader over IT, but they are not bought in and are unwilling to have a frank conversation with us.
What will be discussed?
During the meeting, we discuss three areas: business capability, digital maturity, and technology capability. Across core functions, are your business processes efficient, reliable, and producing the desired outcomes? How well is technology integrated into your operations and strategy? Does your current technical infrastructure meet your needs?
Each of the three sections has seven points to score on a scale from 0 to 10, with 0 being “it’s non-existent or completely terrible” and 10 being “we’re exactly where we need to be and are prepared to succeed”. The scores in each section are averaged to produce a quick score. Putting a numeric value to your progress in each area helps to clarify where your greatest opportunities are.
Business Capability
- Finance – Accounting, financial planning and auditing processes
- Operations – Production, distribution and service processes
- Marketing – Promotion, online marketing and demand generation processes
- Sales – Lead generation, new client acquisition and account management processes
- Human Resources – Recruitment, retention and development processes
- Client Experience – Client onboarding, client service and client support processes
- Management – Planning, execution and organization processes
Digital Maturity
- People – Our employees are productive, collaborating and communicating well internally and externally
- Processes – Our operation is efficient with documented processes with well managed projects
- Platforms – We are ahead of our competitors by leveraging modern social media, eCommerce and Service platforms
- Applications – Our team successfully selects, implements and adopts digital services and applications
- Information – Our team can access the proper information quickly and make good decisions fast
- Risk – Our digital infrastructure is professionally managed, secure and meets our connectivity needs
- Strategy – Our vision and strategy to adopt digital technologies is one of our key competitive advantages
Technology Capability
- Cloud Infrastructure Readiness – Office suite, file share and sync and permission control is adequate
- Communication Readiness – Collaboration, messaging and email is adequate
- Office Infrastructure Readiness – Equipment, performance and printing is adequate
- Remote Work Readiness – User Devices, mobility and and productivity is adequate
- Business Continuity Readiness – Connectivity, backup and disaster recovery is adequate
- Policy and Compliance Readiness – Government, industry and internal compliances are met
- Cybersecurity Readiness – Network, endpoint and user protection is adequate
Get the Business Improvement Review Worksheet
Download this worksheet to score yourself on the 21 points in our Business Improvement Review. When you’re ready, schedule a meeting with one of our experienced digital advisors who can give you a valuable outside perspective on your organization’s technology and processes.
Next Steps: How to improve your IT
READ: Is IT taking too much of your time?
READ: How can we keep our IT roadmap current? This article goes into detail about our Executive Business Review, which is a quarterly review focused on your IT architecture, service received, risk, strategy and operations.
As businesses grow, so do their processes and technology needs. Managing the tech for a business that has finally gotten off the ground can take a surprising amount of time. With the increased complexity of modern IT, including making all systems talk to each other nicely, it takes a broad range of skills to maintain and improve your setup. We talk about this challenge more in the post, Is IT taking too much of your time?
When you sign up for our managed IT services, you will enjoy a recurring Executive Business Review. On a quarterly basis, we’ll review your business conditions and technology roadmap, regularly making sure that your business processes and IT infrastructure are working together to produce the best results.
To schedule your business improvement review, start with the IT Maturity Self-Assessment.
Take the IT Maturity Assessment
Is your business ready to weather changes, including employee turnover? Find out by taking our IT maturity assessment.
You’ll get personalized action items that you can use to make improvements right away. Plus, you’ll have the opportunity to book a FREE IT strategy session to get even more insights into your IT needs.
