Technology strategy

Technology strategy is a strategy document that describes the technological direction - which Technology technologies, platforms or standards company want to utilize. The importance of a technology strategy is that it helps reduce the heterogeneity of environments and technologies used in the company, thereby reducing administrative and operational costs. A technology strategy can be seen as part of a purchasing strategy because it strongly influences purchasing decisions.

When is a technology strategy meaningful?

Every company uses some technologiea - information technology in the form of computers or software, automobiles or office equipment. Manufacturing companies have a variety of manufacturing or storage technologies. A technology strategy is important if diversity leads to increased operating costs, insreased training costs or other risks such as decreased safety.

The most common reasons for technology unification are:

• High or increased maintenance costs
• High training and support staff costs (company must maintain technology experts)
• High cost of user training
• Increased security risk due to many technologies (information security or work safety)
• High acquisition costs of certain technology
• Vendor Lock-in

What is the technology strategy?

It’s basically a set of decisions that say what technology will be allowed and used in the company. It does not necessarily have to be a separate document, it can only be a paragraph defining the use of certain technologies or platforms. For example, if a business uses a variety of mobile phones - Apple, Android or Windows - it may decide to use only one of the platforms as part of a technology strategy. Then the strategy takes the form of a sentence in the employee benefits description and in the purchase rules, such as “We only buy Android phones” or “We only buy XY computers”