An introduction to this blog
Over many years, I have talked with scores of business leaders about their struggles to realize the economic potential of their business ideas. The storylines follow a common pattern. They have a good vision of where they want to go, they can see a path to get there, and they need technology tools to support their initiative. Then they run smack into the business technology (BT) challenge.
“We saw the opportunity coming, we were ahead of the market, Bob went to IT and disappeared for three years, by the time he came back, the opportunity had been captured by our competitors”.
“We knew what we needed, hired consultants, did a study, compared the alternatives and carefully picked the solutions we firmly believed was the right answer for us. Then the implementation went on and on and on. The project has costs us five times what we thought it would and we are still not implemented”.
“We formed a committee, had all the right leaders on it, we bought the best solution on the market. We know it would help our organization go to the next level, but our people won’t use it”. It has become “ShelfWare”, or the new and improved, “CloudWare”.
“We bought the best solution for us in every category, front office, back office, ERP, CRM, LOB, etc. As our business has grown, we are forced to use more and more administrative time and people to keep the software’s working together, our vision has become a nightmare”.
“We are not finding the deals, not getting a seat at the table. We are barely visible on the internet search engines, my past experience with Adwords wasn’t very effective and got very expensive.”
I’ve heard versions of these quotes from many smart, motivated, successful business people. Are there really so many pitfalls and difficulties on the road to BT success? Are there people that know how to succeed with BT that won’t cost me a fortune?
“Yes there are!”, answers both questions. The roadmap to success must be well planned, constructed with clarity, simplified in a jungle of complexity, balanced properly for short and long term tradeoff’s, and guided by a trusted advisor that has the experience, wisdom, and the integrity to keep your best interest in front.
It is to address these challenges that led me to decide to start up the solutions division of Sympatico Resources and this blog. I will be sharing client challenges (anonymously), past experiences, and insights to help you capture opportunities and avoid pitfalls. Some post will be more business oriented, others more technology, but the main focus will be how to successfully utilize technology to improve business results.
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