As tech forges forward at a brake neck speed, with new innovations bursting on to the scene seemly every other day, the pressure on IT departments is rapidly increasing to keep up with digital growth in the work place.
When budgets are tight and the workloads are high, the most precious commodity in an IT department is time. Unfortunately, most of that time is dedicated to curating and reviving the Old Legacy IT that is driving their company. Tending to these old systems saps precious hours and can be frustrating.
But life has moved on. The pressure on Marketing, Sales and Customer Service teams to innovate and perform in an ever changing digital world, is immense. They can’t wait for IT departments to make the tools they need to move swiftly and be relevant, so, ultimately, they look elsewhere.
Most of the time they look towards Shadow IT – subscribing to cloud software products to get the job done.
This is all well and good, but for IT departments, it can lead to more headaches they don’t need. With a lack of control over output, security and varying problems for each platform, scattered across the company, Shadow IT can cause as many problems as it can solve.
But Shadow IT is helping employees become more productive and business’s more efficient. At Crimson’s recent conference 80% of the audience said they tolerated or even loved Shadow IT.
What’s needed in any business is data singularity. A place where a company can hold all its data in one secure and accessible area. A place where data can mingle and cross over effortlessly and proficiently. A place that Microsoft and others describe as the “Data Lake”.
Microsoft’s Dynamic’s 365 can collect data scattered across the digital landscape of your business and draw it all into a common data model, to create your own data lake.
By using Microsoft PowerApps data can be harnessed to build easy-to-use apps that help solve those unwanted problems that Shadow IT is creating.
With a few clicks of a button - in a low-code/no-code environment - you can create a customized app that can work on any device, making it easier to construct reports, send files and connect business entities like marketing, sales, service, finance, operations, and commerce.
With an ever more tech savvy work force, apps are a clear and effective way for your staff to interact with company data..
It will help your business make sense of disparate data, discover insights and in turn creating new opportunities.
Building an app with the Power Platform is an easy way for IT teams to become more responsive to business needs, while gaining back some control and governance around IT systems that are lost when shadow IT gets out of control in a business.
IT departments - time is now, once again on your side.
We can support IT teams in responding faster to the business - we are an arm around their shoulder rather than a threat to their job.