We're all working through a challenging economic environment. Between talks of a U.S. recession and grappling with a post-pandemic landscape, you undoubtedly have a lot to consider as you plan and budget for 2023.
While the inclination is to pull back on investments during periods of uncertainty, we believe one of the most important things you can do during this time is double down on your areas of strength and find ways to make your organization more resilient and efficient. For most companies, that will include a strategy and plan for leveraging the cloud.
Whether your organization is cloud mature or just starting to think about launching a cloud journey, we believe there are three guiding principles to keep in mind: focus on your customer, enable your employees, and emphasize governance.
Let's dive in.
Focus on the Customer
No matter your stage in the cloud journey - whether far down the path or just getting started – it often makes the most sense to start with better serving and deepening relationships with your customers. Focusing on how you can become easier to do business with, create more customized experiences, and better anticipate your customer’s needs are all important goals.
Uncertain economic environments require a thoughtful approach and technology investment strategy. We recommend selecting a focused, targeted project that will provide a better experience for your end customers. Then, start small, show success, and plan your more extensive migration from there. You'll gain a wealth of experience from your first foray into the cloud that will save you significant time and money in the future.
For cloud mature organizations, it may be worth considering new tooling that can help you get better at what you do in the cloud and serve your customers more efficiently. There's a huge push towards user-driven, self-service reporting in the cloud. Technologies like Snowflake, Looker, and even PowerBI can help deliver value-added experiences for your customers without taking a lot of effort or cost to lift once you're already cloud-enabled.
Enable Your Employees
Empowering your employees to be more efficient is a wise use of resources during tough economic environments and competitive labor markets. Cloud modernization allows your employees to explore innovative technologies with a very low cost of entry.
The cloud makes new tooling and technology more accessible by almost eliminating the need for lengthy research and setup time. Where you previously would need to research specifications, provision servers, connect with various IT practitioners for licensing, and handle the installation process yourself, the cloud takes care of all of that in mere minutes.
Democratization of technology, data, and information through the cloud makes your business more effective, plus it goes a long way to retain employees who value innovation and new opportunities.
Emphasize Governance
Certainly not the sexiest topic, but governance is key to maximizing your cloud strategy, regardless of where you are in the journey. Proper governance leads to the best long-term success with the fewest problems down the line. Unfortunately, many organizations view it as an afterthought, but it ultimately enables you to execute operational excellence and cost optimization efforts.
If you've been working through your cloud modernization for some time, it's worth performing portfolio rationalization to simplify down to the least number of platforms possible. In this way, you eliminate friction in onboarding new hires and moving people from disparate divisions without worrying about training and enablement on multiple complex systems.
Further, it's no shock that cloud spending can get out of control if not managed properly. Cost optimization is an element of governance that helps you use your dollars wisely as you enter your next fiscal year. Take advantage of your current cloud instance and find ways to implement the right tooling, spend time on tagging and categorization for reporting, and provision resources appropriately to reduce your overall cloud expense and harvest better ROI on existing initiatives.
As a benefit for those just starting, you can build your cloud migration strategy with governance and cost optimization in mind. By determining which platform makes the most sense for your business, you can eliminate the hassle of multiple cloud vendors and ensure the one you choose works well for you versus against you.
Final Thoughts
Regardless of your current status in the cloud, the difficult economic environment lends itself to making wise moves with your cloud investments. To move ahead and build a more resilient and efficient company in the face of market turmoil, you can keep three critical factors in mind related to your cloud efforts - keep the customer first, empower your employees, and emphasize governance in your initiatives.
If you're looking for a partner with the expertise to help optimize your cloud program or build one from the ground up, Concord is here to help.