By 
The pace at which technological innovation and disruption have taken place in recent years, its impact has felt in every aspect of business and strategy formulation. With the digital transformation of businesses worldwide, long-term value can be sustained by blending B2B sales strategy with technology to co-design and co-construct value for companies.
Since technology is the catalyst for this transformation, the traditional lines between the business functions and tech are fading, and various leading companies are rethinking the role of technology.
In this piece, we will look at ways to unify business and technology objectives and the role of technology in successful business strategy formulations.
Shift to Cloud Computing:
The impact of cloud computing in formulating business strategy can be understood from the fact that more than $1 trillion will be spent as businesses transition to cloud-based platforms.
Since cloud computing offers numerous benefits for small and large businesses, it provides a modern approach to the data storage needs of companies. The shift to cloud computing involves an efficient and cost-effective solution for backing up essential data, streamlining information sharing, and running multiple software applications.
This shift to cloud-based platforms is one of the reasons behind the boom in demand for an online business information systems degree because this program blends business fundamentals and technical expertise in a way like no other program does.
Strategic Imperative:
Strategic imperatives are the business goals such as KPIs, ROI, earnings per share, profit margins, etc., which are determined by the industry and b2b businesses. Senior executives juggle these imperatives, either proactively or in response to pressures from shareholders.
Thus, technology and business leaders must work in tandem to operate a business while keeping present and future technological trends in mind. Strategic imperatives help in directing and constraining the decision choices for decision-makers.
Operating Model Agility:
Traditionally business models like plan-build-run were helpful when the directive of technology function in an organization was limited to managing the technology environment efficiently with a lesser dependence on other areas of an organization.
Today business leaders expect tech to contribute to the shareholder value and demand speed, agility, and necessary specialized skills to be engaged in the customer life cycle. The efforts are in process from many organizations to change their operating structure, where a critical starting point can be a change in mindset.
Up to this point, the lack of joint accountability was missing for seamless integration of the technology and business operating models.
Future of work, workplace, and workforce:
Market dynamics and advances in technology are constantly changing the dimensions of the work itself, the person performing the job, and the place of work. With the evolution of technology, the nature of work and workspaces will evolve simultaneously.
- Work: Work that humans performed is now being automated, distributed, and undertaken by machines due to the rise of cloud, robotics, AI, and other technologies. This provides a new opportunity for the business and technology to come together and shift time and energy to delivering creative, critical, and strategic business outcomes from managing the technology.
- Workforce: Business leaders have various talents at their disposal today, from full-time to contract to part-time workers, including the ability to outsource. The future of the workforce will likely become very different as it is today.
Business leaders can leverage technology to acquire, retain and train fresh talent and skills to perform better under pressure.
- Workplaces: New collaborations and teaming tools are rapidly adopted with advances in mobility and connectivity. Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) help design new products and introduced more innovative ideas.
Leaders now understand that co-creation in business and technology functions requires conducive workspaces and physical proximity for collaboration and innovation.
Open Source Software:
The use of open-source software is enabled by companies’ IT departments that allow organizations to use various free tools. The key benefit of open-source software for businesses is flexible licensing with modifying source codes.
In other words, you get the chance to customize the functions of this software according to your organization’s needs. This software has open-source variants available online for almost every feature used by organizations.
Thus, this significantly reduces the costs for businesses and has provided competitive advantages to companies. In the end, it comes down to businesses; how they leverage this technology to improve profit margins.
Resource Management:
Each business requires various resources to operate, such as financial resources, human resources, inventory, etc. For the larger organizations, resource management historically has been an arduous task, and technology has offered several convenient solutions to manage these resources.
Integration of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) in various businesses has improved their efficiencies and processes. This integration has made many businesses hassle-free, progressing rapidly as they are enabled by multiple integrated applications that manage and automate operations.
ERP software is the core of IT and Business collaborations, helping businesses develop effective strategies.
Conclusion:
Many businesses today solely exist only on the back of technology. Technology has transformed every aspect of our lives; thus, businesses are no exception as many thrive, innovate or fall behind solely because of emerging.
The blending of the two functions – business strategy and technology is the future. We have examples where companies have dominated the industry or disappeared from the scene only because of differences in technology.
