Technology Advising is Business Advising

At Transform Labs, we’re technology advisors, but this also means we’re business advisors. Technology and business should be inexorably linked. To do otherwise does a disservice to both.

Technology is a tool that organizations can leverage to improve their operations, better serve customers, and increase overall enterprise value. However, too often, organizations treat technology tactically. Technology can only help unlock an organization’s untapped potential for efficiency, productivity, and scale when it is aligned with its strategic direction. A tactical-only approach to technology will provide minimal value to an organization, whereas a strategic approach can drive immense value.

We engage with clients around their business needs and opportunities just as much, if not more so, than technology initially. Systems can be integrated, products built, and user experiences designed, but all of the production around technology projects is less relevant than the business factors driving and resulting from the work. The production aspects of technology initiatives should be a given these days, with business and strategy advising being of the greatest value.

Business cases are not a new concept for substantiating a technology project. However, business cases, especially for mid-market companies and nonprofits, are more challenging to create than those at large companies with the team and infrastructure to invest the time and money in extensive business cases. We help our clients bridge the gap between the organization’s current and desired future state through business and strategy advising as a precursor to technology advising and production work.

Business cases at enterprise companies also, too often, justify something someone wants to happen and how rather than an unbiased perspective. The landscape of enterprise technology projects is littered with low-value returns from projects supposedly from well-thought-outwell-thought-out business cases. High-value leveraging of technology can’t happen from biased and tactical business cases. Tactical business cases justify tactical approaches to technology rather than strategic ones.

An organization’s overall strategy should drive everything supporting it, including technology. Technology can only serve an organization effectively by first understanding technology’s role in serving an organization’s strategy. Aligning technology to an organization’s overall strategy is how we add the most value to clients. There are numerous ways to get technology production work performed. Offshore, contract staffing, freelancers, outsourced, in-house, and, of course, a combination of these. Technology production services vary in experience, expertise, quality, and cost. However, an organization choosing to approach technology production work is less important than what drives the work and how the work is contributing to key strategic objectives.

The only way to leverage technology strategically and maximize its value is to align it with an organization’s desired future state of business model, operations, and objectives.