Are You Sitting On The Sidelines In This Digital Era?

Adopting next-generation technology platforms is key for all businesses. Popularly, people also refer to it as “All Businesses and Technology Business.” You can read The Wall Street Journal article to learn about how Walmart turned it around with technology.

• Large organizations waste 20-40% of effort on rework, because of legacy systems that do not work cohesively.
• Efficiency gets impacted in multiple ways, whether it is because of outdated process flow, or hard-to-use systems. Think about someone who is using the mainframe to get their daily work done.
• User Experience rock bottoms as old systems are difficult to work with. Customers are already in the Mobile-first world, whereas businesses are trying to catch up to deliver their products and services in the Mobile world.

These are just high-level views. If you are interested, you can read a lot of more here in the Forbes.com blog. If you are running an organization, or run a particular department, some, if not all, these listed items are applicable to your business as well.

Based on my experience and conversations, business leaders are always trying to ride that fine line between change and sustainability. Sometimes the fear of failure or a failed IT project holds back the leaders in doing a fresh attempt.

Unfortunately, we are already in a world which is connected by the internet, powered by Automation & AI and businesses are crossing geographic boundaries. Even small e-commerce businesses are thinking about how to scale their logistics to support worldwide. Interestingly, there are many solutions available at your fingertips as well.

Historically, the automobile business has been the most traditional business. But if you see what Tesla did with their technology approach, “Autonomous Driving” (which was unthinkable even a few years back), “Over the Air Update” and even tracking driving data. These technical innovations and many others made them the 6th largest company in the world. To put it in perspective, they are bigger than the combined valuation of GM, BMW, Ford, and Hyundai.

Can all companies have similar results?

Probably not, but can the use of technology remove inefficiency, reduce manual work, and deliver an excellent customer experience? Absolutely! Below is what Gartner thinks about the most strategic trends in 2022. Not everything is new, but what is new is how we get those done and sometimes how easy it is to achieve it.

Technology is moving ahead at a breakneck speed. Every day it is becoming easier and faster to implement and consume it and create business value which pushes the organization that much ahead of the competition.

Figure 1: Gartner Top Strategic Trends

But aren’t there challenges? The intrinsic fear of failure keeps us away from trying the new. There is always a huge debate on data security. But we really need to ask ourselves, is it really security issues of data or insecurities of letting go of control and old habits?

Most government organizations, financial institutions, and pretty much most businesses are moving to the cloud, so is there really a serious issue with Cloud? What kind of analysis those companies are doing and finding the cloud as good? The right question to ask would be, do we have the right team in place for the implementation?

Cloud is standard for everyone. Only the implementation or the level of expertise on the cloud varies.

Another huge debate is about the implementation itself. In the start-up world, the term “Minimum Viable Product” MVP is a quite common term. The following image is by far the most popular guidance on ‘how to go about doing it.’

Goes very well with agile principles, doesn’t it?

Figure 2: Minimum Viable Product: Peerbits.com

But there is a small catch!

If you follow agile for the first approach, it will still be a very valid agile implementation. But it will make you very unhappy as the emojis suggest. There are multiple reasons for it. You do not really have any working product after months or years of waiting. Stress and tension escalate because of changes that come along the way and, most importantly, the financial budget.

For some organizations, it even becomes difficult to keep funding the project. So, chances of success reduce drastically if you follow option #1

In option #2, it is far easier. With every step, you get something that you can actually use or provide to your customer and start enjoying the benefits right at the start. Sure, you still do not have that fancy car in the picture, but your return on investment is fairly good. Also, in this way, you will probably have returns from most of your investment before you close your product.

Unlike the first approach, it also gives you the ability to stop at any point in time without having to worry about financial loss. If you want to know more about this method, please refer to this book by Eric Ries.

To conclude, there are ways to break those inefficiencies and use technology to your advantage. If you want to know more about how we helped one of the largest telecom companies transform their 5G license management system.

I hope this blog provides insights on how technology can be your friend to concur business challenges.

I am keen to hear your thoughts in the comments section on what are the other big challenges you are facing around technology.

Apratim Ghosh

An entrepreneur, leader, and technologist with over 22+ years of experience, I am the founder of Inovar Tech. I focus on providing Technology and Advisory services to small, mid to large enterprises. I understand business challenges are hard to cope with, but with the help of technology, they can be overcome. I have a proven track record in architecting and implementing complex technology projects successfully. I am always keen on identifying new business opportunities and my experience as an active angel investor helps me see things from different perspectives. Looking forward to an insightful conversation about business, technology, or anything under the sun.