Technology as a percentage of a company’s annual revenue has nearly doubled since 2016.
According to a Deloitte Global Technology Leadership Study, the average tech budget as a percentage of revenue grew from 3.28% in 2016 to 5.85% in 2024. Of course, for some industries that percentage is far greater, for instance in banking and telecommunications.
Nevertheless, as the necessity for more sophisticated technology increases across the board, company owners want to ensure that the technology they have invested in is being used fully and in a way that offers maximum value to the company and to the customers you serve.
Conducting an annual assessment of your technological efficacy can provide you with insight that will assist you in making investment decisions in the future and provide you with a roadmap for improving your staff’s effective use of your entire tech stack.
Conduct a survey
For a large and complex company, conducting a broad survey may be challenging, since you might have hundreds of different applications. The first point of order would be to determine what information you are trying to gather and narrow the focus of the survey to a specific area.
For instance, your HR department is going to use specialized software that your title team never has access to, so surveys should be appropriately tailored for each department.
Some of the data you may want to gather includes:
- What programs an employee uses most often
- How much time an employee spends on each program in a given day
- What is the user’s comfort level in using required software
- Identification of problems or issues an employee has with a particular program
- Suggestions users may have for improving their experience with the platform
Determining at the outset what you are trying to achieve with the survey should help guide your decision about what specific questions to include.
Create a focus group
Since many of the applications used in the title insurance industry are collaborative, it might be helpful following the survey to gather together a focus group to thresh out any issues or problems that arise in the survey.
For instance, you may discover a breakdown in the training sequence, leaving some inexperienced staff members feeling uncomfortable with some of the programs, while long-time staffers are expressing confidence. A focus group can help discern where the breakdown is and how best to resolve the problem for current and future new hires.
A focus group can also tackle any communications breakdowns that are leading to problems when it comes to collaboration within the team and the process sequence.
IT department feedback
The most effective ongoing tool for assessing your employees’ use of programs within your tech stack is creating a feedback mechanism from the IT department itself. Your IT managers should be tasked with compiling reports based on the interactions they have with staff concerning any issues, questions or problems they encounter in using the company’s technology.
Most IT departments have a request log so this would be a pretty seamless process. Organizing and analyzing this data for the benefit of senior management on a prescribed basis is another way to keep on top of any issues employees may be having.
At Alanna, we have a fantastic support team that is always available to help your team get the most out of Alanna’s wide-ranging resources. Call us today to learn more about the full scope of our services.