A company’s most valuable assets are its people and its data. Modern businesses need the ability to access and process large volumes of data to remain competitive. They also need a high-quality information technology (IT) team to address the challenges of efficiently implementing and maintaining technological solutions.

Computing technology is evolving at a dizzying pace. The past decade has seen major innovations in the offerings of cloud service providers (CSPs). Tremendous advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are opening the door to processes that provide deeper data analysis and more effective automation.

The cutting-edge of computing technology is a constantly moving target that can be difficult to assimilate into a company’s environment. It’s essential that an organization keeps its technology team’s skills sharp so the potential of new technologies can be leveraged to meet business objectives. A poorly skilled team will hinder a company’s ability to compete and optimize its technology investments.

Why You Should Keep Your Technical Team’s Skills Sharp

Updating your technology team’s skill sets provides your business with multiple benefits. These benefits can furnish a competitive edge to your business and enable you to maintain high levels of customer satisfaction.

Deploying new technology effectively

New technology is introduced regularly in the IT world. Solutions including improved hardware devices, innovative cloud offerings, and integrated code libraries need to be assessed to determine their usefulness to a business. Your technical team needs to have the education and skills necessary to understand which new solutions help the business meet its objectives.

When new technology is introduced into the environment, it needs to be administered and maintained. A technical team must possesses the necessary skills to use new technological solutions effectively to get the most out of a company’s IT budget.

Optimize your existing technical solutions

Existing technology is often updated by vendors to introduce new features or functionality. Teams need the proper training and skills to use these new features to address business objectives. Ignoring the new capabilities of existing solutions can lead to inefficiencies and security vulnerabilities.

Minimize the occurrence of technical problems

Providing increased training and education to technical teams minimizes the number of problems experienced by the systems they support. New methods and techniques can resolve thorny problems that plague the support team, freeing up time for more productive work.

Improve employee morale

A majority of technical team members enjoy being exposed to new technology. Even better is to be able to use new solutions to streamline their jobs. Providing training and education shows that a company values its employees and leads to better employee morale.

Maximize the value of data resources

Cutting-edge solutions are necessary to extract the maximum value from business data. Teams need the skills necessary to understand the underlying AI and ML foundation that drives many analytic and automation solutions. This understanding enables them to use these solutions to get the maximum value from business data.

Reduce security vulnerabilities and data breaches

Technical teams need training and education to address the constantly growing security threats modern businesses face. Teams can then identify security gaps and be prepared to defend against new attacks against the company’s infrastructure.

Challenges to Updating a Team’s Technology Skills

Organizations need to address several challenges that can impact their ability to keep their technology team’s skills updated. Mitigating these challenges helps a company use technology effectively so its business can thrive.

Balancing training and current responsibilities

The amount of time teams can spend on training needs to be balanced with their responsibilities in maintaining the current environment. It can be hard to find the time for training without affecting the infrastructure’s smooth operation. Identifying the right personnel for training can also pose problems as current duties need to be shifted to other team members.

Chasing the technological bleeding-edge

Technology is changing rapidly. Deciding which education and training opportunities to invest in can be challenging. Internal teams can never be skilled in every bleeding-edge solution that may address business concerns. It’s often impossible to know which technology to focus on when training time is available.

Training is expensive

All forms of training and technical certification are expensive and need to be incorporated into a company’s IT budget. In lean times, the training budget often gets trimmed in favor of more pressing financial issues.

Employee turnover

Employee turnover results in a knowledge drain that may not be easily rectified. The expense involved with training new employees can become prohibitive when turnover rates are high.

Partnering with a Highly-Skilled Technical Team

Businesses can benefit by partnering with an IT services provider featuring skilled and certified technology specialists. Working with the provider’s team avoids the need to provide in-house training and augments your IT staff with trained technicians who can effectively address your needs.

Prescient Solutions offers customers access to a team of skilled and motivated technical specialists. These experts are certified in a wide range of technologies that span all aspects of your computing environment. Engaging Prescient’s technology experts provides customers with the following benefits.

• Current and updated knowledge – Our specialists are certified in multiple versions of IT solutions. Customers can verify that the team has the specific knowledge they need.
• Hands-on experience – Our certified engineers have proven themselves through work with multiple clients. This concrete experience cannot be matched by book knowledge.
• Training in all leading technologies – Using certified engineers gives a company access to training in all IT disciplines including solutions they may not have implemented yet due to lack of skills.
• Streamlined implementation – Skilled IT teams can quickly and effectively implement the solutions that allow your business to grow. They can quickly get new technology up to speed, maximizing IT investment.
• Cost-effectiveness – Obtaining the services of a certified IT professional is cost-effective when compared to hiring internally. Services can be scaled back when they are no longer needed, providing further cost savings.

Contact Prescient Solutions to see how our team of experts can help meet the IT requirements of your business.