I recently had a conversation with Peter over at Flexiion and we discussed our shared desire for a depth of relationship with our customers and a common love for working with technology-enabled businesses.
That got me thinking – I’ve worked ‘in’ technology for so long, different businesses, different customers, what does my history of tech-enabled look like…and what challenges do I recognise from them…and are they still relevant today? Am I missing any big-ticket items that would help me understand better?
My first career experience in a tech-enabled business was working for a care home.
I realised that where my previous employer was all about tech (a .com selling advertising) – the care home was directly about people. The people they look after and the people who are caring for them. Beyond this, keeping the business alive so they could continue the first objective, care for people. I wouldn’t say this was an eye-opener as such, but definitely, a realisation of what good technology can do and how draining it can be on individuals and teams when it doesn’t work.
- Email not working
- Poor mobile telephone coverage in remote areas
- Secure storage and management of client information
We’re talking more than 20 years ago, so thankfully solutions to these problems are more commonplace and accessible but they are still real business challenges when the technology doesn’t work. The challenge doesn’t go away, the technology needs implementing and managing correctly.
If the technology doesn’t work in a care home, it wasn’t the end of the world (back then anyway), people caring for people was just made easier with technology, but it wasn’t critical. Things may have changed now but to see how it can impact people when it’s not working was a lesson learnt early in my career that’s for sure.
I worked in retail for a bit – the primary focus here appeared to be getting the product in front of and to a customer, period. If the customer didn’t have access to the product, there’s no business. So a huge amount of focus on technology was enabling this
- Inventory management systems
- POS hardware and software
- Logistics and communication systems
Any of this going down at any time is not good news – then you start to understand the peaks and troughs of the trading year and wow was that insight in how tight an industry can be. I’ve dipped my toes in and out of the retail sector a few times, always enjoyed working with people so passionate about their product but stressful given the slim margin for error on everything being done across the business. And sometimes how casual some things can be disregarded given the focus elsewhere; mind you – this is common.
I had quite a lot of time in defence throughout my career. There’s a heavy focus on technology being the solution rather than being tech-enabled but what it did was focus my mind on who was benefiting from this technology and my involvement in this or any organisation like this.
- Quality is absolute, with very defined and often precise limits
- Cost is a big focus due to profit limits for certain types of sub-contractors
- There’s a lot of ex front line people around; a great insight into the impact of your role
Front line and support teams who assist in offensive, defensive and peacetime initiatives. I was never going to be front line material – but to be able to help put systems and infrastructure together than helped those people, that made me feel very proud.
It was about this time I started to realise my IT and management skills had a direct benefit to people than maybe I had given myself credit for, back to the days of care homes, through to health services and defence. That isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy working with retail and finance companies (for example) but the proximity felt very real in defence, care and the public sector.
I understand that working for a motorway services company allows people to take a safety break on a long journey, or that working in finance peoples people can get access to credit for a mortgage or run their business, or hiring vehicles enables people to move around…but assisting front line really stood out – especially as technology-enabled organisations.
I’d also been fortunate to work with blue light services, NHS, policing and fire over the years – again the focus on being so close to the front line and directly having an impact on the performance and functionality of systems that help people do their job, keeping people safe, away from harm or accessing health care services; a real privilege.
- People
- The right information, in the hands of those making immediate and time-sensitive decisions
That’s all it’s about – people, helping people. Focus on that with a vision of how they’re being helped (safety, health, rescue) and you can’t go wrong here.
I’ve gotten about a bit through the years, I guess that’ll happen when you have 20 odd years of FTE, contracting and consulting experience.
Another tech-enabled industry I really got a kick from was engineering. People who make things really tick my box. I got called out once for watching a guy in my local sandwich shop make sandwiches – quite a tangent from working with a firm that builds bridges but the principle is the same for me. I rarely built anything tangible – and I was able to support people who made things you could see, feel, hear, physically experience. I think this stems from watching my dad when growing up – he repaired and built cars; something very broken with a very real output at the end of his (and any team he may be working with) efforts.
- Quality is paramount – it’s what’s been sold at the end of the day
- Precision, much like defence, the technology needs to be able to support precision, in an absolute and defined manner
- Speed of delivery and understanding of lead times – this creates a lot of stress in this industry as I recall it
What’s true of technology-enabled businesses is they need their IT to support them, in a flexible manner that is ideally transparent to the task at hand. IT just needs to work. That’s it.
When supporting these businesses if you can go about your work as an IT enabler, implementing change with minimal fuss, limiting risk and balancing the hearts and minds of all the interconnected people – you’re winning, and in turn so is the customer, their teams and their customers.
What have I missed about technology-enabled businesses? What challenges are common across industries and what challenges have I completely ignored in each sector?
Feel free to let me know how far off the mark I am or indeed if I’m on the money.