Without proper long- and short-term planning, technology mishaps can wreak havoc on your overall business goals. To get value from your technology investments – whether it’s a networked office or a customer relationship database – a plan must be developed, tweaked and followed. Your plan will help you to increase productivity, streamline your processes and the natural by-product will be increased revenues. Here are eight tips that will help you to create a technology plan and stick with it:

1. Get your priorities straight. Examine your most important business goals. Write them down in order of importance.
2. Enlist an ‘A’ Team. Who are the people with the know-how, the experience and the savvy to land your company where it needs to be? To get maximum mileage out of a project, assign team members to specific aspects of the project.
3. Take stock. Make a list of all the ways your company currently uses technology. Then, add to this list, any technologies you think your company may need.
4. Play match maker. Match the priorities from step 1 to the technologies in step 3. If you have any items that are not a “pair”, carefully evaluate them to ensure that the technology or the priority is actually critical to your business operation.
5. Timing is everything. Tie deadlines to your technology projects. A to-do without a deadline doesn’t get done.
6. Count your chickens. Determine what portion of your budget will be required to implement your plan? Are those funds immediately available? If not, how will gain access to the monies needed?
7. Check yourself. Set small, challenging easily-measured milestones for your team. Carve out some time to conduct regular reviews of your plan. Be sure to include the members of your ‘A’ Team in this process.
8. Put it in writing. Create a working document that your team can adapt and change as your company grows. Refer to the document often and use it as a guide. Remember, your plan is written on paper, not stone.

I’m sure you’ll find that once your team has a comprehensive planning document on which to focus, sticking to it will come naturally.