Last week, an organisation contacted me enquiring about what technology would enhance their customers' experience.
It is similar to asking what meeting platform do you prefer - Zoom, Teams, Hangouts or possibly Facetime? These technologies all do similar things, but a poor meeting on any platform will still be poor.
The preparation, attendees, facilitation, and focus will optimise a meeting experience and outcomes, not the technology.
The existing work and mindset within organisations can erode the potential of any technology - pointless work. Assess these before technology selection; for example, consider;
Legacy work by a long-term specialist where nothing has evolved nor is documented. Only when something goes wrong are people surprised that this work is occurring.
A secret project that few people know is completed and remains unimplemented as it is idealistic and can not scale across the business.
A lack of willingness to attempt anything new or risky due to a collective consensus by organisational leaders. They rationalise why they don't need to change and how their business is "different or unique". The business stagnates while their industry or those adjacent evolve.
Many things achieve value; some of these are;
challenging traditional tasks,
simplifying legacy complexity by applying collective thought across a community,
anticipating customer expectations, and
implementing.
A pre-digital assessment could be helpful to surface these things, avoiding painful or pointless analogue processes in your digital business. This is the first section of Digital Is Everyone's Business. Building this awareness and capability with your people will be as much or possibly more beneficial than any technology, like a well-facilitated dial-in teleconference instead of a poorly led video conference.
The magic happens when skills create the knowledge to utilise the technology.
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