Choosing a new enterprise technology is no easy task. To ensure you make the right choice, place these four key considerations at the top of your checklist.
Today’s enterprises must continually grow their technology stack in order to address the evolving demands of the modern marketplace. However, not just any enterprise technology will do. Equipping your employees with the right tools can lead to greater efficiency, more innovation, and even increased revenue—so it’s important to invest wisely. Unfortunately, many enterprises don’t.
According to a recent study done by cloud security provider Netskope, the average enterprise uses 25 different cloud services for IT and application management. However, the same study suggests that a shocking 98% of those cloud services aren’t considered “enterprise-ready,” meaning they “don’t implement enough controls to enforce enterprise-level security and compliance requirements.” As a result, far too many companies have found themselves locked-in to enterprise technologies that don’t suit their needs, don’t help them push boundaries, and actively put their business-critical operations at risk.
Troubling statistics like these raise concerns about how enterprises are evaluating their vendors and the technology they bring to their stack. To help ensure that your organization doesn’t fall into a similar trap, here are four key factors you should take into consideration when making enterprise technology decisions:
1. Security
Of all the factors that go into choosing a new enterprise technology, security is one of the most important. We want to stress this consideration right away because the data suggests that many enterprises prioritize other qualities over security in their vendor decisions, which can leave them facing devastating security breaches further down the road.
No matter how careful you are with your sensitive data, just one unregulated third-party vendor could grant a hacker access to your entire network.
While qualities like user-friendliness and cost-effectiveness are important for your bottom line, the future costs of using insecure technology can render your bottom line obsolete. According to data from IBM and the Ponemon Institute, the average total cost of a data breach in the United States in 2019 was $8.19 million. HIPAA and PCI violations alone can cost up to $1.5 million each. What’s worse, these costs don’t even include those associated with lost business and a publicly damaged reputation.
No matter how careful you are with your sensitive data, just one unregulated third-party vendor could grant a hacker access to your entire network. Working with vendors who prioritize security is an upfront investment to mitigate the financial, reputational, and regulatory risks of a data breach.
Some initial questions to ask as you make this decision:
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Does this vendor have security certifications in place that demonstrate they are able to protect my sensitive data? In other words, can I trust this vendor to help avoid a data breach?
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What preventative measures are in place, like role-based access control (RBAC), to enhance data security?
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Will this vendor willingly submit to audits?
2. Scalability
Enterprises need technologies that will empower them to address growing demands. As such, it’s important that any vendors you choose to work with will be able to support not just the enterprise you are today, but also the enterprise you hope to become in the future. Switching vendors is a hassle that you’ll most likely want to avoid, and the top enterprise technology vendors today will have taken great care to make themselves future-proof.
Some questions you can use as a jumping-off point include:
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How much cloud storage does this vendor offer? How much are they charging??
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Does this vendor support integration with forward-thinking technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence that suggest they are positioning themselves for continuous technological growth?
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Has this vendor worked with comparable enterprises in the past that would indicate how they handle enterprise IT at scale?
3. Integrations
Enterprise applications don’t exist in a vacuum. Any new technologies you take on will become a part of your stack, so it’s critical that any vendor technologies you consider are able to seamlessly integrate the old with the new. You don’t want to get stuck with a bunch of disparate, single-use technologies that can’t communicate with each other and end up limiting productivity.
Demo: Watch how easy it is to integrate your application with third-party services.
Some questions to ask as you make this decision:
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Will this technology integrate well with the third-party platforms I already use?
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How does this technology handle legacy systems? APIs?
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Is this technology easy to upgrade?
4. Collaboration and Ease of Use
In many modern enterprises, it’s already challenging enough to break down silos and keep everyone up-to-date on a project’s progress. Your new technology shouldn’t make this more difficult. Look for enterprise technologies that foster collaboration and are accessible enough to allow your entire team to get involved where appropriate. This might seem like a “soft” requirement, but collaborative development is always better and always leads to more-innovative development.
Start by asking yourself:
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Does this technology allow individual workers to easily share progress with team members?
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How does this technology help you break down silos within your enterprise to allow team members across departments to communicate more easily?
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Is the technology user-friendly? How long will it take to get your team members up to speed?
Why No-Code?
At Unqork, we encourage you to ask these questions of your prospective vendor because these are the kinds of things we considered when we were on the other side of the table. We want to help you find the right vendor for your specific needs, which requires us to make these conversations a two-way street. Our platform overview helps illustrate how we think through this article’s considerations every step of the way—but we’d love to hear from you directly. Contact us today to schedule an Unqork platform demo. Also, sign-up for the Unqork newsletter to keep up-to-date on the latest in the world of no-code.
For more expert advice on buying technology for your enterprise, check out our aPaaS Buyer’s Guide.
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