In speaking with clients, reviewing countless white pages and participating in discussions with business and industry thought leaders we have compiled a few take aways for conversations, we believe, could be impactful for CIOs, CTOs and Organizations to evaluate in 2023. These thoughts, are of course, in addition to all things Security. 

 While there are many topics top of mind, these are a few to begin with. Your team at IQ Wired is happy to discuss these and anything else that might be on your mind, in more detail, and assist with your 2023 -2024 strategies.

Setting Your Sights on a Technology Standardization 

• More than 2,000 Merger and Acquisition (M&A) transactions were finalized last year valuing almost $2 Trillion. It was a year of changes, driving hefty strategic goals and showed a rapid increase from the previous year.
• With that, we saw a “let it lie mentality” while the business continued to focus on transition agreement requirements, communication and strong numbers knowing they would have time to deal with “it” later. 
• Later is now and CIOs will be tasked with consolidating the M&A service providers, vendors and technology stacks to reduce cost, increase efficiencies and performance for the organization in its entirety. 

Finally Adopting the ‘Buzz’ Words 

• It will be a year to evaluate and implement the emerging technologies that have been part of many discussions over the past few years. There are many and just a few include: Zero Trust Architecture, Internet of Things (IoT), Comprehensive Data Mining, the Metaverse and Web 3.0. 
• Your team can’t do it all at once so don’t lose momentum and efficiencies by focusing on all of the emerging technologies. Focus on the ones that will be the most impactful in a timely manner for your organization and start road mapping the others.

Scrutinize Cloud Cost 

• AWS has over 1.5 million SKUs in their product portfolio making management cumbersome and costly. Now is the time to invest in solutions and tools that can truly manage the ever changing Cloud landscape and provide spend analysis, cost optimization and a positive ROI. 
• It is time to identify unused instances, renegotiate contracts and educated developers on Cloud cost awareness 
• At the same time and with our increasing Work From Anywhere workforce, there is no better time to evaluate the Cloud applications for core business functions like your CRM, ERP, HR and other business applications. These applications have already been purpose built and ready to support your needs. 

Recession Preparation 

• While some may think it counter intuitive, there are strategies that the competition may not have the time or resources to focus on, but if you could, would it be a cutting edge approach to success?  
• Ramp up marketing and demand for your product and services. Again, this may seem odd but you will be the one that stands out while your competition shrinks and loses market share. Demand Generation could be a must to stay relevant to your consumer base.
• Is it time to make the investment in your unstructured data? Analyze and utilize all the data you have been collecting and storing for years. Harness the intelligence to gain perspective on efficiencies for both internal stakeholders and customer satisfaction. Turn data collection into optimization making your workforce more productive, removing wasteful processes, automating repetitive low-level tasks, targeting the right audience and improving customer satisfaction levels!

 We know most all Business Initiatives now involve Technology. We are here to be your partner to understand your business initiatives, translate them and assist in defining the technology solutions that will optimize your organizational outcomes! Let’s talk more about your year ahead!