12 Critical Elements To Consider When Mapping Out Q4 Tech Plans

The final quarter of the year is approaching, and businesses are trying to close out with strong figures. Tech businesses are no exception, as a strong Q4 report can set a company up to capitalize early into the following year.

Tech firms have to approach the last quarter with a combination of planning for the future and consolidation of their existing contracts. The infrastructure that is crucial to the business should be audited for performance and cost, and the company’s long-term outlook revised based on its current considerations.

Below, 12 members of Forbes Technology Council examine some of the crucial elements that tech businesses need to consider when developing their Q4 plans. Here’s what they recommend:

1. Cybersecurity In Business Continuity Plans

Traditionally, disaster recovery and business continuity have focused on system crashes, sabotage and natural disasters. Fortunately, most scenarios that create a business continuity issue are rare occurrences, which is why businesses often neglect business continuity plans. However, cybersecurity creates an imminent hazard to all businesses and demands a refocus of business continuity response. – Micheal Goodwin, Server@Work

2. Quantifying Value

As tech teams map their fourth-quarter plans, it’s important that they are able to quantify the value of the different technologies being deployed against hard-line business goals. The technology must show a clear “before-and-after” result that justifies the expense. Achieving this requires solid data analytics. – Abe Ankumah, Nyansa

3. Alignment With Leadership

While you’re addressing key areas within your division, ensure that your plans also align with the organization’s and the business leaders’ critical needs. Enabling technology to drive the success of the business helps meet profitability goals and business objectives. – Don Schlising, Landmark Services Cooperative

4. The Processes You Want To Optimize

CIOs are focused heavily on digital transformation (especially those in federal government). When mapping out your Q4 tech plans, focus on the processes you want to optimize — and then work backward to find the tech to do it. Identify your most inefficient bottlenecks, and create an open plan to take the time to find the best possible solution. Give yourself room to think outside the box! – Christy Johnson, AchieveIt

5. Speed To Value

Can you build something that shows real business value in weeks? Forget quarters and months — weeks! Success that can be added to over time is where people need to be. I am not talking about building a bunch of disconnected applications quickly. I am talking about building a base-level app and then being able to add to the application — speed and power, and simplicity of use covering complex problems. – Marc Wilson, appian.com

6. R&D Buying Leverage

Most sales teams have quotas that they are trying to hit heading into Q4. Your technical service providers are typically very hungry for business heading into Q4. They are ready and willing to cut you deepened discounted deals to hit their own targets. Q4 is a great time to pre-invest in tools and services that will help you in the long haul. – Matt Hulett, Rosetta Stone Inc.

7. New Project Development

As businesses focus on closing Q4 business, IT is often unable to roll out completed projects or to gather requirements for new projects, which both consume employee bandwidth. That said, Q4 happens to be a good time for IT project development, and it is also good for IT procurement as vendors need to close their own business. Use the end of Q3 to gather requirements for Q4 project development. – Steve Pao, Hillwork, LLC

8. Finishing Strong To Drive Business Strategy

Tech leaders need to ensure they are making the necessary arrangements for projects and delivery to finish strong. Most companies’ strategic goals rely on their technology. Making sure that projects and plans are completed on time and successfully sets the business up to be able to meet their goals and objectives. – Stephanie Roberts, Archer Daniels Midland

9. Stress Tests

Most businesses get significantly higher traffic during Q4 due to the holiday season. One important thing for tech leaders to consider is to make sure your servers can handle the increase in traffic smoothly. The stakes are higher at the times of higher traffic. Collect data from previous Q4s and guesstimate the traffic for this Q4. Also try to keep experimental features to be deployed in the next quarter. – Vikram Joshi, pulsd

10. Outcomes, Not Output

First, read “The Build Trap” by Melissa Perri. Most product and engineering teams I see are effectively digital waiters, taking orders from customers one at a time and delivering on those orders. Take a step back in Q4 and really understand what value propositions your product has and how those correlate to the outcomes your customers want to achieve. Stop measuring just based on features being released! – Robert Fly, Elevate Security

11. The Latest Technology Improvements

As time passes, technologies and processes advance. What may have been a sound tech a year ago may be preventing further growth and causing blockers that have been solved for in new, emerging technology. Q4 planning is a good time to ask whether changes must be made to meet the next year with full readiness, leveraging the latest improvements out there. – James Kawas, Saily

12. Windows 7 End Of Life

Microsoft will end support for Windows 7 in January 2020. I’m amazed by how many Windows 7 PCs are still out there. The fourth quarter is the last opportunity to proactively replace those machines before they become security risks to the whole organization. – Paul Blough, BloughTech

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