Last week I explained why enterprise software companies weren’t equipped or prepared to solve the problems you are facing with your digital transformation. Not that they aren’t helpful - they just can’t do everything you require. (To get caught up, checkout last week’s post here.) They do, however, provide APIs that are a very useful part of the overall solution.
Let me explain.
All of my customers have some version of the following problem: Their point solutions work fine; they may even be the best on the market for addressing the challenges they are designed to help you resolve. They remain, however, point solutions - your portfolio of applications has too many of them to make meaningful connections between them all, so the data generated in those systems remains trapped in each system. Let’s call it a data dead end. These dead ends make it difficult for you to use your data and systems to run your company effectively.
In an increasingly digital world, connecting to a single solution isn’t sufficient for the digital operations that are necessary to produce the digital experience that customers, vendors, and employees are requiring. Digital connections between systems that enable the conservation of “systems of record” and makes possible the creation of a “single source of the truth” require a more focused effort for your specific company than what an enterprise software company is willing and able to supply.
What’s missing?
Connective tissue. Since there is no incentive for the enterprise software companies to connect everything you are using in a way that is coherent with your specific operation and business mission - you must do that yourself. This requires skills that many mid-market businesses don’t have in their organization. It requires professional software development help and business leadership that can align the technology with the strategic outcomes the business is committed to produce. It requires focus on your specific company and what it requires to fulfill its mission.
Operation versus use.
Operating something, a tool, a department, a vendor, is just applying it in the context it was built for and letting it perform the job you bought it to perform. In enterprise software, that might look like an accounting package enabling you to account for your business, an asset management system enabling you to manage your assets, or a help desk system helping you manage your IT requests. If you only apply these systems to the challenge that they were designed to resolve, you are operating them. To “use” them, they must be aligned strategically with your business' mission. They won’t do that on their own and the company that installed and configured them isn’t there to solve that problem holistically. In fact, when they install and configure their software for you – some of your other point solutions may not be in place yet.
Using any system means to make it effective in your strategy. Using something is strategic, operating something is tactical (at best), but more likely task oriented. Enterprise software can be operated to solve the challenge it was designed to solve - this often creates the data dead ends previously mentioned. Or, it can be used strategically to feed other practices and drive business results that your competitors aren’t achieving. This requires a strategic orientation and the digital connective tissue to enable your strategy.
At 8 Penny Labs, we help you with that challenge. We help you compete in an ever-increasing digital marketplace.
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