Fast and full adoption of new technology becomes more and more important as the world’s work continues to trend rapidly toward digital solutions. Here are the 5 biggest challenges businesses face when it comes to technology adoption and the things you can do to help overcome them.
Cybersecurity
In this year alone, businesses have seen an 80% increase in cyberattacks, according to Fintech News. As more and more networks are being accessed by employees working from home, cybersecurity becomes increasingly difficult and important.
But when it comes to adoption, why does this matter?
New technologies present new challenges for employees, and that means apprehension. As they are learning, employees are hesitant to do anything that may create issues, and as cyberattacks get more sophisticated, the apprehension grows.
A solid implementation plan for addressing challenges of technology adoption can help assuage these fears and increase your employees’ comfort levels and confidence as they are learning.
Cloud Computing
In-house networking and data storage, long considered to be a safer alternative to storing information in a separate place from your business operations, is now a common and growing trend as well.
The COVID shutdowns created a rush for remote work-compatible solutions, and cloud computing was essential to its success. Cloud storage providers saw a unique opportunity to put their systems’ scalability and accessibility to good use – and struggling businesses made the leap from in-house storage to cloud solutions.
The challenge here, however, is that the convenience of cloud computing gives way to many cybersecurity concerns. Integrating your new collaboration tool also means making the most of the internal storage and archiving systems that are present within them while educating employees about the pitfalls and security concerns of the cloud system the tool uses.
Attitudes around Automation
A good collaboration tool is intuitive and has the capability to automate certain tedious, but necessary, tasks. But the word “automation” in the workplace often comes with a stigma. That stigma creates hesitation and even hostility on the part of the new users who are on the path to adoption.
Fortunately, AI services like Siri and Google Home systems are creating a new level of acceptance in the minds of the masses. As you move through the training process in pursuit of adoption, monitoring these attitudes and aptitudes in regard to automation can provide helpful insight and motivation when the benefits of these automation technologies are skillfully applied.
Skills Gap
“Both business leaders and laggards are affected by skill shortages and talent gaps that hinder the rapid adoption of the modern IT architectures needed for agility,” Tech Crunch reports in their article. These skill gaps can be caused by experience, training, or education differences. A one-size-fits-all adoption and training strategy, while still marginally effective, is quickly losing ground to more tailored, skill-gap-attentive approaches.
Skills gaps are going to affect your rates of adoption, both during the training phases and in everyday operations after that period.
Continuity and Disaster Planning
Business continuity and disaster plans were put to the test this year as the pandemic claimed more and more businesses, both for short periods and permanent closures.
2020 has taught us that expecting the unexpected needs to be a common business practice now and in the immediate future. These plans are challenging in that the scope and impact of each disaster can vary widely. Your tech, new and current, needs to be able to weather these storms.
MMITC Was Made for Overcoming Challenges of Technology Adoption
Meet Me In The Cloud is your go-to resource for white-glove support and training of collaboration services and tools. That means we have been working through these roadblocks to adoption from our company’s inception.
Whether you need training and education, event assistance, or other collaboration-based support and service, contact us today.
