Getting value from technology

When I started writing this morning I thought my article was going to focus on cloud, but it turned into trying to help people get more value from technology. The reason I felt to write about this is that there is a lot of confusion about how to get the value out of Public Cloud tech (think Amazon Web Services, Azure, Google Cloud, Digital Ocean to name a few).

From my own personal experience garnered from consulting to different industries I have learnt if you want to get value out of anything technology related you need to understand the problem the technology answers. There are a lot of sales people out there trying to meet their monthly targets and sell you their shiny thing. You also need to understand where you are in a vendor’s sales cycle. 

I've been pretty appalled at some of the decisions businesses have made on a whim and also the amount of wining and dining that has happened for someone to get a sale. I’m actually more sickened by the way sales people of IT vendors behave to get a sale. 

Please don’t see this as being judgmental, I’m just hoping I can help business people see how important it is to not take a sales person’s word for it and go and do their own homework before committing to something. This is only my perspective and you may have not experienced any of these things. I wish it was the good old days where your word is oak and we didn’t need to sign for things on the dotted line to get agreement, but unfortunately dishonesty is something that happens in business when pressure is put on to perform.

This is why I think outsourcing technology decision making is a really poor choice for an enterprise company – it does work for smaller businesses (e.g. Virtual CIO) but at scale there is a lot more room for error and lack of accountability. 

Key activities

Here are some key activities you can do right now or in the next few weeks to measure the value you get out of a technology. For example if you are wanting to improve your business reporting processes. 

Initial Evaluation

To understand any technology and evaluate it you need:

A good understanding of your business goals. 

Define clear success criteria for this technology.

The key principles you are going to apply for technology purchasing.

Make sure each and every major investment in technology aligns with a specific business goal.

Communicate with your internal stakeholders the findings and discuss benefits and likely challenges. Quite often I like to evaluate a number of options to just make sure you are making the right decision.

Test the technology out

Quite often what the sales brochure says vs. what the software does are 2 different things. 

Enterprises like to use buzz words like “innovation lab”, but essentially what you need to do is test technology out.

This is like test driving a car, but it just takes a little longer and requires some patience and a team working together. The most important people to test the technology are your end users of the technology. For example if you are assessing a CRM, test the CRM with your customer facing staff.

Ask the sales person and their supporting staff to give you demonstrations for particular problems your business needs to handle every day. And do this with the staff that are subject matter experts.

Design a proof of concept (POC)

You need to prove the technology will work in the real world, so a proof of concept or “POC” will help you achieve this. The POCs main tasks vary depending on the problem you’re trying to solve but here are some ideas:

·     Form a small team to build something related to a specific problem.

·     Run an internal hackathon. This could be useful if you have a high number of tech staff.

·     Hire an external company specializing in the technology area to build a proof of concept.

At the end of the POC stage you can have some key learnings that can help with further evaluation and recommendations as well as a strong business case.

To do any of the above requires skill and if you don’t have an in house expert on a particular topic (e.g. Public Cloud, ERP Consultant) I definitely recommend a training workshop to help guide the process.

Ben Fellows’ 20+ years’ experience across a number of industries and in roles ranging from business owner, solutions architect, manager, team leader, product owner, technical consultant, developer has given him insight into how technology can be used.  

He leads technical engagements for Teem ensuring customers get the most value out of cloud technology. Feel free to email him at ben@teem.nz to get help or ask any questions related to the above article.