We Are in a Technology-Driven Business Transformation Mode

Two decades ago information technology (IT) was progressing at a predictable pace. Fifteen years ago, IT was the enabler and it shifted in its influence and use to a new role of providing new vistas and opportunities for extensive business process re-engineering (BPR) to take advantage of every-increasingly powerful PCs/servers/networks, software and other technology that came spilling out in the 1990`s. But back then the BPR concept focused on cobbling together systems to provide new capabilities, not necessarily wholesale system change or replacement. Adapt, but don’t re-invent if avoidable. Ironically, we`re doing a lot of that in shifts to cloud computing.

From 2000 on IT’s innovation pace picked up: underlying software systems and applications began to make greater inroads with their creation, adoption, and rapid maturation. Businesses were rapidly moving away from BPR to wholesale overhauls in how they were doing business, stepping over the line from IT as the enabler to overtly using IT and other technologies as the drivers.
With the emergence of, and push to, cloud computing in 2008/2009, the scope of that transformation exploded to flow in every direction, from apps to platforms to data centers to energy efficiency to cost savings (we still hope), to … well, pretty much everything. New tools such as virtualization opened up new opportunities in IT service and operations/management. Now mobile apps for smart phones and tablets are enabling and driving even more change.

In essence, we`ve re-dimensioned the scale and scope of change in our business as the result of new technologies we are rapidly adopting. With all of that comes the re-visiting or inventing new approaches to issues of security in general, system architecture, big data, new analytics, integration of new sales tools such as social media, and a host of other factors that in the past could be planned and accommodated more uniformly and with a far less haste than today.

Well, therein lies what is to me the key point: Technology is driving business transformation on BOTH ends of the supply chain … the sellers, suppliers, providers and service firms on the one hand who have to create, provide, manage and maintain the products on the one end, and the customers who have to use them on the other. Technologies beget new products, which in turn drive new business models, which lead to new market approaches and even new markets which …

But what is often missing in product firms and their customers are change management plans and programs to manage the changes in culture, operations, and all other facets of the firms based on these new technologies. Ill-considered and improperly defined or implemented changes can be devastating to the implementers. Technology that drives you can be detrimental to your firm if not properly planned and exploited.

All of this must be considered when planning a new product company, or adopting a new product/technology. Successful planning promotes a successful effort. Poor or NO planning almost guarantees failure … and that problem is something no business wants.