Things you should consider spring-cleaning this season: your attic, your car, and your organization’s tech stack. Some CIOs are already trying to get a headstart with the latter.
Courtney Schuyler, co-founder and resident transformation consultant at SkyPhi Studios, a consulting firm that helps organizations “realize the full value of their digital investments,” told IT Brew that she has seen a 20% uptick from this period last year in CIOs interested in her services. She speculates this is due to the budding focus on AI in the industry and news around the Department of Government Efficiency’s alleged quest to modernize US government systems.
“It really just triggers…companies to say, ‘Should I be doing this for my organization?’” Schuyler said. “And my answer to that would be yes, always, yes. It’s always a good time to re-evaluate and look at what is and isn’t being used.”
Symptoms of a well-needed clean. Schuyler told IT Brew that there are a couple of tell-tale signs that organizations may be overspending in their tech investments, including low usage of certain tech in a company.
“If there’s a low level of adoption, that may mean that there’s several different types of tech for maybe that use case,” Schuyler said.
Schuyler added that unused licenses are another sign that a company may have excessive digital investments. A 2023 report from Nexthink found that nearly half (49.96%) of installed software and licensed software-as-a-service applications went unused in its examination of anonymous data from more than 6 million customer devices.
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“If you have, say, 500 licenses and only 10 of them are being used, I think that’s a clear, clear place to look at,” she added.
Clean slate. CIOs looking to get a grip on their digital investments can start by making a routine out of familiarizing themselves with their current tech stack and expenditures, according to Forrester VP and principal analyst Bobby Cameron.
“The number of organizations using a piece of technology and the business results for it is something that needs to get measured on a regular basis,” he said.
During these evaluations, Cameron suggested that leaders get a sense of the “viability” of their stack.
“Is it still running?” Cameron said. “Is it still doing what it needs to do? Is it meeting the business results, and does it support [your] ongoing tech evolution strategy?”
Schuyler added that initial reviews of a tech stack is a marathon, not a sprint.
“Generally, the rule of thumb is [to] give people eight months to a year to really wrap their arms around their tech stack…and the strategy for improving it, and it can take multiple years to get through it all,” she said.