Investing in technology can be a game-changer for businesses, but how do you ensure that these investments actually pay off? With the rapid pace of technological advancements, it’s easy to get swept up in the latest trends, yet not every investment delivers the return you expect. For IT managers, maximizing ROI on technology investments is crucial to driving growth and ensuring long-term success. But what strategies can truly make a difference?
To help you navigate this complex landscape, we turned to industry experts and asked them a vital question: What are the best strategies for improving ROI on technology investments? The insights we gathered from a founder and a VP of product management offer a strategic roadmap for making smarter tech decisions. From focusing on projects with clear, measurable benefits to continuously assessing the performance of your technology, these six strategies will help you optimize your tech investments, ensuring they deliver tangible value to your organization.
- Prioritize Projects With Measurable Benefits
- Implement Robust IT Governance Framework
- Continuous Monitoring and Proactive Maintenance
- Hire Cost-Effective Overseas Tech Talent
- Use Business Intelligence Tools
- Evaluate Technology Performance Regularly
Strategies for Improving ROI On Technology Investments
Prioritize Projects With Measurable Benefits
Technology leaders can improve ROI for technology investments by prioritizing projects that align closely with business goals and have clear, measurable benefits. Conducting thorough cost-benefit analyses before implementation helps ensure that resources are allocated effectively. Regularly monitoring and evaluating the performance of technology investments allows for timely adjustments and optimizations.
Encouraging user adoption through comprehensive training and support maximizes the utilization of new technologies. Leveraging automation and data analytics can streamline operations and uncover additional efficiencies. Finally, maintaining open communication with stakeholders ensures that technology initiatives continue to meet evolving business needs and deliver value.
Joseph Primicerio, Founder/CIO Advisor, PrimiTec Solutions
Implement Robust IT Governance Framework
I highly recommend implementing a robust IT governance framework to help improve your ROI in technology investments. Frameworks like these provide confidence that you are aligning your technology initiatives with business objectives while considering risk management.
Under this approach, regular review and assessment of your technology become a key part of your operations. By reporting on metrics, you can effectively measure the technology’s success and its alignment with your business needs. This continuous feedback loop ensures that you can make informed decisions about your IT investments, thereby enhancing your ROI.
Craig Bird, Managing Director, CloudTech24
Continuous Monitoring and Proactive Maintenance
Our best ROI-improvement strategy is continuous monitoring and proactive maintenance. We regularly assess and optimize our clients’ IT infrastructure, catching potential issues before they become major problems.
We had a client who was constantly dealing with system crashes and downtime. Implementing consistent monitoring and performing regular maintenance allowed us to reduce their downtime and saved them a lot of money in lost productivity.
We act as our clients’ IT department, helping them understand their technology and make informed decisions. This empowerment leads to better technology usage and, ultimately, better ROI. When your team knows how to effectively use the tools at their disposal, you see improvements in efficiency and productivity across the board.
Elmo Taddeo, CEO, Parachute
Hire Cost-Effective Overseas Tech Talent
Hiring cost-effective tech talent overseas can be a good strategic move for improving ROI on technology investments. Countries like Brazil, Poland, or the Czech Republic, for instance, have emerged as significant tech hubs, producing a large number of tech graduates who are well-versed in modern technologies and can adapt to global standards. At the same time, software developer rates in those and many other countries are 1.5-3x lower than in the USA and EU. So, it allows companies to hire skilled, budget-friendly professionals without compromising on quality.
This strategy works at its best if you engage foreign tech talent with the help of staffing agencies. Then, you not only decrease specialists’ rates, but can also scale a team hassle-free when project demands fluctuate. An agency can quickly fill skill gaps with specialists able to deliver commercial results and set newcomers to productive work from day one (structured onboarding, security trainings, etc.). Both short- and long-term contracts are available.
I’d also recommend delegating payroll and contract management to them in order to avoid managing hiring paperwork and double taxation. With international hiring, you never know what relevant law in which country will change tomorrow. With a team of experts in this field, you can focus on optimizing your tech project development, not on People Ops.
Ann Kuss, CEO, Outstaff Your Team
Use Business Intelligence Tools
One strategy we’ve found really effective for improving ROI on technology investments is using Business Intelligence (BI) tools like Power BI. By pulling together data from all sorts of sources into one BI platform, we get a complete picture of business operations. Creating custom dashboards that focus on key performance indicators aligned with specific business goals helps make the data truly useful.
Real-time data processing gives us immediate insights, so decisions can be made much faster. It’s also crucial to ensure employees are well-trained to use these BI tools effectively. Regularly reviewing and updating the BI systems as needs change keeps everything running smoothly. These steps help turn raw data into actionable insights, boosting efficiency, growth, and ultimately improving ROI.
David Shuster, Director, Managed IT Experts | Edinburgh
Evaluate Technology Performance Regularly
Think carefully about how new technology can help achieve critical company goals. Moreover, ensure that these technologies are providing maximum value and supporting long-term success by periodically evaluating their performance against set parameters and being ready to make adjustments or optimizations as needed. Think of it as matching the right tool to the right job.
Segey Serdyuk, VP of Product Management, NAKIVO
