By Alex Phelps, Senior Partner
Often businesses approach improvement, disruption, automation, digitisation (I think they ultimately all mean the same thing) with a clear set of outcomes in mind.
These range from improving customer engagement, driving sales, reducing costs, optimising cash, increasing efficiency, making better decisions and controlling risk (there are too many to mention). I was even told once, we are doing this because we want to, not because we have to, in answer to a simple question on expected outcomes. However, many of these transformations (there’s another one I’d missed out!) end up being stuck in PowerPoint or diluting their original goals as they go through endless gate reviews and budgetary re-forecasts to deliver an acceptable return investment that doesn’t conflict with an existing initiative. The principles of Agile are all too glibly thrown into the conversation when theorising about the latest way to “promise” you won’t spend a lot of money and deliver nothing of note.
The real issue to overcome is rarely the idea of what needs improving, but the ability to get something going that can deliver those coveted quick wins so the programme can continue.
What if, you had freedom from commercial red tape and access to low cost capabilities that meant you could play with data, create automations and demonstrate benefits using your own organisations data. Great idea but too expensive!
Maybe that was true once upon a time, but now with cloud and disruptive technologies you can create live working examples with system connectors, online access, centralised controls, real-time reporting and user interfaces for under £40k (well we can at TechniCap). Where the next agile sprint can launch into production or add new features for testing. Imagine you took a working example to your next gate review and let your approving superiors use what you had already built. Yes you may get them more excited than was planned, but you may also be spared the 3 weeks of PowerPoint preparation needed for such an event.
Now we get to the crux of the matter, IT asks if your solution is out of the box and is it being configured or customised?
Well in truth there are some very fine technical lines that separate these well used terms. The reason behind the question is that no one actually believes customisation can be cheaper and less risky than configuration. Well is it? It is at TechniCap partners.
We have created a number of tools and digital platforms where customising for clients has been proven to be faster, cheaper and delights the end user.
If we had locked down our solutions so only minor configurations could be made, quickly by users, our clients wouldn’t end up using all the functionality and need to be trained. Plus, I’m sure our clients would end up paying for functionality they don’t need or use in some way or another.
At TechniCap we customise/configure our pre-existing tools to meet our client’s exact user, system, data, security and any other need they may have.
This means we can build tailored solutions (now is that customisation or configuration I hear you ask; it doesn’t really matter!) that cost less that you would think and meet all of your requirements. Curious, please get in touch, bring your data and let’s see what you can do when we free you from all that red tape.
Alex.phelps@technicap.partners