Kim Bozzella, Protiviti Global Lead – Technology Consulting. Overarching responsibility for strategy, solutions and consulting delivery.
Embracing emerging technologies to drive business growth is a common focus for forward-thinking leaders. Businesses are pursuing technology modernization initiatives to enhance their competitiveness, efficiency and agility. These initiatives aim to upgrade and improve an organization’s technology infrastructure, systems, software and practices.
However, many often overlook the potential impact—both positive and negative—a technology modernization project can have on operational resilience, which is the ability of business services to recover from and resume after adverse events.
While technology modernization initiatives are intended to enable the business, the increased complexity of technologies and heavier reliance on third parties often introduce complex business challenges. Astute business leaders inherently understand that along with meeting business objectives around enablement and effectiveness, these initiatives must do so in a way that increases the resilience of the business services in question, not the other way around.
A conscious effort is necessary to align these objectives with business needs to maintain resiliency. This alignment ensures the ability to adapt, recover quickly and sustain operations in the face of disruptions—whether caused by natural disasters, cyberattacks or other unforeseen events.
Here is a brief rundown of what I see as key steps on the ideal technology modernization path to achieve resiliency.
Understand Your Core Business Services
Understanding how a company’s core services function within the operational business model requires identifying each of the assets along the critical path of those services such as the applications, infrastructure, data, third parties and other elements that make a service whole. Without this deep understanding, true resiliency woven into the fabric of these services becomes an impossible chore.
Embrace Innovation
Every new technology modernization solution represents both opportunities and risks. To take full advantage of the opportunities, stakeholders should be educated on the advanced capabilities of innovative technologies that improve on current practices and processes. At the same time, managing the risks requires rethinking response and recovery methods to accommodate new technologies.
Embracing technology modernization involves more than tactical upgrades and improvements. Innovation should become a key element in fulfilling business-centric goals such as improving competitiveness, enhancing efficiency and reducing risk. Innovative technologies also deliver additional benefits in the form of improved customer experiences and future-proofing systems (a key component of resiliency), making it critical to embrace innovative technologies that can modernize the tech stack.
As noted earlier, there also is a risk component with innovative technologies such as cloud-based solutions, AI-enabled applications, predictive analytics and digital automation—including but not limited to resiliency implications. Managing these risks requires rethinking response and recovery strategies to integrate new or enhanced technologies and business processes.
Moreover, while these solutions often include features that lay the groundwork for technological resilience, it is essential to evaluate these native resiliency solutions within the context of the entire technology stack.
Build Resiliency
Establishing resiliency during this initiative is crucial for ensuring the organization can adapt, recover and maintain operations amid disruptions. Quite simply, resiliency should be integrated from the outset. Fortunately, achieving resiliency is not a new concept. Some best practices to consider include:
Orchestration, Training And Awareness
Plan for the impact on enterprise programs and ensure everyone is aligned and can work together effectively during a disruption. Make certain all employees are trained on the importance of resiliency and their roles in maintaining it. This includes regular training sessions, awareness programs and clear communication about disaster recovery as well as business resilience and business continuity plans.
Comprehensive Risk Assessment
Conduct a thorough risk assessment to identify potential vulnerabilities and threats. This includes evaluating the current technology infrastructure, identifying critical systems and understanding the potential impact of various disruptions.
Disaster Recovery Planning And Drills
Develop a detailed disaster recovery plan (DRP) that outlines the steps to be taken in the event of a disruption. This plan should include procedures for data recovery, system restoration and communication with stakeholders. Enable resiliency by using multiple data centers, cloud-based backups, or high-availability or failover systems to minimize downtime in case of a failure. In addition, organizations should regularly test and update the DRP through tabletops, simulations and drills.
Agile And Flexible Infrastructure
Design the technology infrastructure to be agile and flexible, allowing for quick adaptation to changing circumstances. This can include using scalable cloud solutions, modular systems and microservices architectures.
Continuous Monitoring And Maintenance
Implement continuous monitoring and maintenance practices to identify and address potential issues before they become critical. This includes regular system updates, security patches and performance monitoring.
By following these best practices, organizations can establish a resilient technology infrastructure improved with technology modernization initiatives that can withstand disruptions and continue to support business operations effectively.
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