Does this story sound familiar?
AscentWear's Dilemma
Meet Pattie
Head of IT
Patty is Head of IT for AscentWear, a global specialty retailer designing high-end breathable clothing for all types of rugged environments. With annual revenue exceeding $100m, it’s a company with a good brand and growing reputation. Patty’s small IT team of 20 largely consists of people who design and build technical stuff. There is very little IT overhead as much of their operations has been outsourced to the Cloud.
Meet Sharif
COO
Sharif is the Chief Operations Officer who’s responsible for all manufacturing, inventory management and distribution. His role requires constant attention to detail to ensure smooth operations continue. He rarely gets time to future proof his part of the organisation.
The Challenge
CEO
Sharif has been tasked by the CEO to examine new ways of innovating his supply chain to both reduce overhead costs and disrupt similar retailer competitors. Sharif is familiar with several supply chain technology vendors and has even invited a few of them in for a chat to discuss what they could offer AscentWear. He particularly likes FlexiLogieTech, a large logistics platform with good credentials and with many customers significantly larger than AscentWear. He suggests to the CEO and Pattie to prepare a business case as early as next week to investigate what it would take to implement FlexiLogieTech.
The Dilemma
Identifying what really matters
This story is just one of a number of ways in which key technology decisions are decided first, then retrofitted into a business reason to support it. Why do so many of us continue to be enchanted by the next shiny object to fix our business problems? The reasons behind this are numerous but the answer is actually simple!
To perform effective strategic execution requires us to re-prioritise what is important. It’s about placing people first, governance second and then technology a distant third. Only then can we receive the promised technology benefits that best fits our current situations and future forecasts.
Interested in learning more?
From the two images below, what size is your organisation?
Governance Is Your Friend
Click on the image to listen to an interview discussing good governance to driving successful business outcomes. And how governance is quite different from larger organisations.
Three planning questions to save your career
Feel paralysed and overwhelmed by technology choices? Click on the image and read our instructional blog to learn how easy it is to make more effective technology decisions.
