Accelerate tech development
The past year has seen the introduction of technologies such as AI in a way that the masses can now fully grasp. There is an ongoing effort within companies, and among those who consult for them, to both understand how AI will impact business and, more importantly, drive fundamental change within the cost structure.
It is easy to assign this thought leadership and integration to the likes of Microsoft, and Google. However, relying on the outside is the problem we aim to address. Companies have yet to orient themselves to the fast-moving pace of new technologies and develop the right organizational structures and process flows that enable rapid iteration and scaling. How often do you hear within your organization that development resources are limited and that a needle-moving initiative will have to be added to the roadmap for next year (still with no guarantee it will be pursued)?
Companies, both large and small, are still in this limbo. Only initiatives that respond to existential threats and receive company-wide buy-in are developed and implemented in a reasonable timeframe. Think back to the early part of COVID-19, when companies seemed to miraculously enable digital interfaces, pickup, and delivery services in record time.
The goal, and our aim, is to help companies enable this same level of rapid iteration and integration of new technologies and processes for questions and experimentation that are not existential threats. We see three issues preventing companies from moving quickly:
Orgs operate in functional silos instead of service layers
Innovation teams (Skunkworks) are too distance from the core operation
No single team or individual understands all the work in flight
Your org is functionally oriented instead of service oriented
We tend to find ourselves and our teams working in silos, with functions standing next to each other, instead of operating as a stack of services, with critical functions sitting on top of one another. Each team should think of themselves as an enabler of some aspect of the customer experience, and in doing so, can be independently proactive about planning, developing and incorporating new technologies.
Today, new initiatives, especially those that have the greatest customer impact, expand outside of a single functional area. This means different roadmaps and priorities, translating to hurdles and delays when driving change. For example, if a business leader requests a new capability, all aspects of the project need to be considered and thought through by each distinct area of the org: the customer experience, the operating processes, the supply chain, the enabling applications, and the infrastructure those applications sit upon.
Depending on the scope of the initiative, it can cause a disruptive rethink and reorientation within each group that is much larger than the project should necessitate. Instead, if each group were a service layer, with the explicit goal of being an enabler for the next group, we would see the advent of tools and processes that facilitate rapid iteration and minimal development time.
With regard to tech enablement, the magic happens within the tech org - essentially getting ahead of what the needs are going to be from other areas of the org and building those capabilities sooner. This means the development and release of APIs, and services that provide easy access to data and minimal application development time. With a service oriented hat on, the capabilities here should be developed in a forward-looking way, because the end applications and customer use cases have not yet been thought of.
As a final example, as an infrastructure team, part of my mandate would be identifying and planning the incorporation of emerging technology long before an executive requests it. What changes to data center strategy and server capacity will AI dictate? How will I ensure that the application developers I serve are able to both access all the information they need for AI-driven initiatives and develop their applications as quickly as possible?
This enables an “As a Service” mentality, in the same way it became a massive scale enabler for the likes of Amazon. Get ahead of the needs in the layer above you and create the services in advance.
Your skunkworks is too distant from the core operation
Innovation is a partnership, between those who own the technology roadmaps, and those who own applying new technologies to business problems. Neither side can fully drive innovation on their own. Those who own the tech roadmap can’t readily foresee all the customer experience enhancing use cases. Those who own the customer experience can’t implement new tech in a scalable way without the owners of the roadmaps.
If your innovation team, or skunk works, is working for the business but not within the business, then they will produce amazing ideas, prototypes, and even successful pilots, with little ability to scale quickly or successfully.
This is where the delicate balance comes into play. New technologies are platforms for the business to build on. As new buzz words come to the forefront, CXOs who own tech infrastructure and application development need to have a vision how the technology can be implemented in a way that is future-proof, scalable, reliable, and minimizes development time. This is their contribution to innovation.
Innovation teams, if they select from readily available technologies these executives paved the way for, can then confidently combine and orient them in new ways, knowing that wherever they land will be a sanctioned and scalable solution.
Let’s use an example. An innovation team identifies a computer vision software product that looks at produce on the sales floor and identifies individual units that need to be removed due to reduced fresh life. The application makes sense and drives clear customer experience improvement. However, scalability is a challenge, because now we have to think about 75 cameras across the sales floor, mobile applications that direct associate work, and where all the processing will occur to analyze images, for not just one store, but hundreds or thousands of locations.
The vendor they are working with made this very straight forward. The innovation team installed their solution in a single store, and proved that they can do it using the vendor software and infrastructure, and are now ready to scale to the chain. However, which internal team now owns incorporating this tech into existing store and headquarter systems, rolling it out to chain, ensuring employee usage and compliance, and driving the benefit? This is an example of something that was developed for the business but outside of the business.
Instead, the components of the technology to assess produce life are building blocks that have already been on tech executive radars. Edge cameras, computer vision, mobile applications, and live databases. Providing each component has a clear strategy and roadmap within the tech org, the innovation team can proceed with mixing and matching the components as they see fit, without worry that it won’t be scalable or supported. This doesn’t proclude a vendor from selling the technology either - as the right strategy will allow other software or hardware to plug into existing infrastructure.
Ensure a Full View of All Work in Flight
The larger the organization, the more complex the inner workings. At any given time, there can be thousands of projects in flight. The organizational structure often provides the illusion of organization because many of these projects roll up to portfolios aligned to executive leaders. However, as discussed earlier, projects that are tied to fundamental changes in work processes or the customer experience will span multiple organizations. We are not suggesting a company-wide PMO or a center of excellence for managing this work. Instead, we recommend a means for seeing a full view of all work in flight, even if in name and benefit only, so that executive-level prioritization can occur. And, more importantly, as things stall, it is easier to drill down to find the source of the delay and rectify it.
This is where a good advisory partner comes in. By becoming acquainted with your organization and inner operations, the speed to issue identification and resolution is faster. Problems can be resolved without the need to go up and down the reporting chain.
J.C. Lewis & Co Advisory is a collective of ex-consultant operators who advise businesses on topics related to emerging technologies, supply chain optimization, and operations management. For your advisory consultation, please follow this link: J.C. Lewis & Co Advisory.
