The Top Digital Transformation Tools in 2023

As a decision maker in any business, it falls to you to keep your ear to the ground for new trends. And as the world continues to get smaller with the relentless advance of technology, change is inevitable. You can bet your competition is aggressively seeking ways to improve their processes and respond to their customers with better IT. 

There are many digital transformation considerations to take into account.

70% of organizations either have a digital transformation strategy or are developing one.

Global spending on digital transformation is expected to reach $6.8 trillion by 2023.

- Zippia

What Is a "Digital Transformation?"

Although it's a broad concept, digital transformation has a few clear definitions.

Digital transformation is the process of using digital technologies to create new — or modify existing — business processes, culture, and customer experiences to meet changing business and market requirements.

- Salesforce

Digital transformation marks a rethinking of how an organization uses technology, people, and processes in pursuit of new business models and new revenue streams, driven by changes in customer expectations around products and services.

- CIO

Starting Your Digital Transformation

Digital transformation is not a something achieved in a single stroke, but rather a multifaceted progression. You may be looking for a better way to collaborate outside the office, a better way to store data or to protect your company from cyberthreats.

Depending on your available resources, you might have to enlist the ad-hoc help of outside professionals, meaning each of your projects would translate into professional IT services, for which you could be hit with enormous capital expenses.

Yet those gains will gradually erode over time, as your new hardware will need to be updated, antivirus will expire and leave you vulnerable, software will need renewals and if your business grows, you'll have to repeat the process with every new onboarding. And so a few years out, you're left returning to the same expensive pros.

Picking a Long-Term Partner

It might be better to opt for a long-term solution, like partnering with a managed IT service provider to handle as much of your IT as possible. They would manage much of your IT infrastructure and theoretically be responsible for keeping everything current, thus enabling true digital transformation by piggybacking on experts to build and maintain your IT infrastructure indefinitately. 

Cortavo is a managed IT service provider that offers complete IT, all for a predictable fee. This means all the steps needed in your digital transformation become our projects, not yours, and we can make and keep your team current while you focus on work.

Now might be the time in your process to select an IT partner that can go the distance with you. If so, schedule a chat with us today.

Physical Servers vs. Virtual Servers

A frequent quandary in digital transformation is deciding between physical and virtual servers for your business.

A physical server is just like what it sounds like: a server with all the standard components (motherboard, CPU, network connection, memory, hard drive, and an operating system (OS) for running programs). Traditionally, physical servers are stored onsite and provide a nexus for storage, communications and data processing.

A virtual server is a software-based environment simulating all the functions of a physical server. They virtualize resources of a physical server, and a physical server can host within it multiple virtual servers. A physical server can run only one type of OS, but if it hosts multiple virtual servers, each virtual server operates independently, running its own OS and consuming its own resources.

Cloud Flexibility Helps Your Business

Virtual servers offer many advantages over physical servers in terms of management, portability, managed cloud security, space efficiency and scalability. Adept managed IT service providers like Cortavo offer VPS hosting to deliver you a complete cloud communication platform for business.

Cloud hosting allows you to store your data and remotely run and access software, avoiding the need to buy and maintain local servers. A cloud-based document management for small business also enables better team collaboration, secure access and hybrid/remote work models. And as your business grows, your unlimited usage would already be included within your flat service plan and scale with you.

An astonishing 67% of enterprise infrastructure is cloud-based as of 2022.

-Zippia

Hardware, Software & Everything Else

In business IT, hardware and software have ceased to be simply products you buy out of a box to take home and install, and the cost of purchasing them as a capital outlay has become inefficient for budgets and planning. For those reasons, both software (and to a lesser extent hardware) are sold as services in the the digitally transformed workplace.

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) -  Software hosted by a third-party IT provider and accessed by customers over the internet. Software is accessed online via subscription rather than bought and installed on individual computers. For instance, Cortavo handles all of your licensing, upgrades and updates while hosting your data and software on our secure cloud servers. We even manage migrations to Microsoft 365 and Google Workplace.

Hardware-as-a-service (HaaS) - This involves the supply, customization and deployment of PCs, laptops, tablets and peripherals to your office and teams. This can include periodic equipment refreshes to keep all equipment current as well as overnight advance replacement to maximize employee uptime. Cortavo warehouses its own IT equipment and is among the few managed IT providers able to offer it. 

IT Support, IT Budgeting & IT Strategic Planning

You may want to handle some of your digital transformation projects by yourself, and yet and your daily job can pull you away from giving them the attention they demand. How can you untangle yourself? Even if you wish to handle some IT projects on your end, you'll need reinforcements to help you clear your plate and focus.

IT Support - How can you budget, plan and implement your next IT project if you're constantly bombarded by internal IT help requests? Hint: you can't. Any IT provider should offer you thorough and prompt help desk support that can absorb the IT issues of your team while you're freed up to focus on long-term improvement.

Cortavo's service desk support resolves most IT issues in ~20 min.

Better IT Budgeting - You need to ensure cost control and sound IT budgeting. You can achieve this by combining piecemeal services into a flat-fee plan that avoids large capital outlays and replaces them with simpler operating expenses — keeping your projects from being throttled by CFO approval processes.

IT Strategic Planning - It's one thing to have a lot of tech at your fingertips, while it's another thing to know how to plan your IT to serve your business goals. IT Strategic Planning requires unlimited technology advisory services, software implementation services and a long-term technology business plan — all of which can keep you from having to pay a technology project manager's salary. 

IT Vendor Management - Instead of juggling relationships with multiple IT vendors, it's preferable to consolidate them if you can and focus on your larger projects. Multiple vendors creates complexity and the potential for difficulty in resolving IT issues that span multiple providers, and they pull you away from vital long-term planning.

Less than 30% of IT vendors are active partners in organizations’ digital transformation initiatives

-PTC

While some IT service providers offer just some of the above benefits, Cortavo can free up your time by providing you all these as standard features within all of our no-surprise service plans. 

All of our plans offer unlimited, Level-2 service desk support, and our remote-access support can resolve the vast majority of your technical issues. And if you need it, we even back it all with on-site IT support. Additionally, we provide your own dedicated Virtual IT Manager (or vCIO) to provide long-term IT Strategic Planning, which brings the added benefit of not having to pay an IT manager's salary. Finally, we manage all your IT vendors behind the scenes, consolidating all your technology relationships into one.

Your Next Steps

Regardless of what projects you have looming over the horizon, selecting the right IT partner for your digital transformation is a make-or-break decision for reaching your goals. Cortavo can tackle all of your projects with all our professional services included within our service plans under a predictable, per-user fee. 

Reach out today and get a handle on your IT projects. You'll be glad you did.