Julie Goldman, founder and CEO of The Original Runner Company, agrees that a collaborative approach helps small business owners to identify their technology priorities. “I don’t know what’s going to make someone else’s job easier if I’m not doing their job,” she says. “The idea that other people can experience something in your company that you don’t see in the same way encourages you to stay on top of your business and continually grow your technology, so that it works for your company.”

This approach to implementing solutions also helps to create a positive technology culture within the company. It makes sense to:

• Sit down as a collective group, talk about what everybody wants, settle on what is actually going to happen, determine the requirements for the system you need, and then find systems and demos that fit those requirements;
• Encourage employees to commit to the technology implementation and feel a sense of shared responsibility for its success; and
• Empower employees by shifting their focus from completing transactional tasks to playing a more significant role in the company’s growth.

The cultural component of technology implementation also involves raising awareness of security concerns, including the need for staffers to lock their computers when they’re away from their desks and for the company to reset passwords when an employee resigns.

Read the third guide in our Connections to Growth series, The Power of Transformative Technology, to learn how the right solutions and technology make everyone’s lives easier.