Build new. Build now!

 

By: Ray Chelstowski / Hilton Barbour

The Covid-19 pandemic dramatically accelerated technology adoption across all industries. According to one survey, 77% of CEOs reported that the pandemic sped up their companies’ digital transformation plans, and as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella noted in the early days of the crisis, “We’ve seen two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months.”

With such a bewildering array of technology vendors and solutions, all offering an immediate silver bullet ROI, it can be onerous and tiring to ascertain which one makes the most sense. And which part of your operations will most benefit from a technology overhaul. To be clear, standing still is not an option but rushing in blindly makes little sense too.

Domino’s is a great example of making sound bets and seeing them pay off. In a mature and competitive industry, the company moved its stock price from $3 in 2008 to a high of $433 in 2020 because a digitally savvy top management team created a strategy that used data-driven experiments to modernize every facet of the company.

Faced with the velocity of change, many organizations are exploring new approaches to growth that reduce their reliance on existing, often legacy, infrastructure, processes and plans.  This idea of building “new and now” can be a powerful accelerant. It can also be a sound way to avoid building on past constraints and having a genuinely future-proofed operation.

At Kognitiv our approach to collaborative commerce builds on a number of trends that are gaining mainstream momentum and allow for accelerated deployment. At the core of our Platform-as-a-Service, we bring together peers and partners, either existing or new, into an ecosystem where data is shared, common business goals are aligned, value is created by partners together and deployed effortlessly to their most important customers. This provides both scale and efficiency for all participants and, best of all, no new technology infrastructure you need to build inside your walls.   

When GE set up its state-of-the-art automated dishwasher plant, it originally justified the investment based on savings over time. However, the plant began to experience additional benefits in unanticipated ways. The quality of the product improved, lower manufacturing costs led to an expansion of market share, and the plant was able to serve as a manufacturing site for other products. Few non-technology-based investments can deliver such wide-ranging value.

There’s no question many sectors are accelerating their digital transformation efforts. That is just sound business in our increasingly digital world. Your customers are expecting a flawless and personalized digital experience, hyper-personalized to their unique individual preferences. Building that on technology infrastructure that was never designed to tackle such scenarios can waste precious resources and sap Executive patience. Building new for the world you’re facing now can often be the fastest way to make gains while your competition fumbles around. A collaborative PaaS solution with the ability to efficiently scale your existing partnerships may be just the fuel you need for your next growth spurt.

ray.chelstowski@kognitiv.com / hilton.barbour@kognitiv.com