June 27, 2023
The world of technology is diverse and multifaceted. From established industries making their digital transition, to fast-paced start-ups, all the way to tech-first companies that place technology at the heart of their operations – each comes with its unique set of opportunities and challenges in improving technology delivery performance. In this blog, we will delve into the technology landscape of tech leaders in Industry, and contrast it with those in startups or tech-first organizations. We look at the unique challenges they navigate, how they differ, and explore the implications for improving technology delivery performance and customer value.
The centrality of technology in startups and tech-first companies means that leaders in these kinds of organizations often have a much easier time securing resources and executive support to invest in new, innovative technologies. Tech leaders in industry, on the other hand, often inherit technology systems that are behind the curve. Maintaining and supporting these systems tends to divert resources away from the things that deliver real customer value.
Unlike tech leaders in startups and tech-first companies, tech leaders in industry lack the data and visibility to truly measure the performance and cost impact of legacy systems. Benchmarking can provide insight on technology maturity against peers, but far more important is investment analysis and getting real visibility on the opportunity cost of technology immaturity. In our work with clients in industry we have seen teams and initiatives losing up to 80% of product and engineering resource simply dealing with the support of legacy systems.
Startups, scale ups and tech-first companies are built around the need to respond quickly to market needs. For tech leaders in industry, decision-making is slow due to more extensive hierarchies and bureaucracies – there are just more hoops to go through. This necessarily limits agility in responding to customer needs. The speed at which things get done is affected. And the lack of agility inherent in legacy systems only compounds the inability to be truly agile.
In addition, resistance to change is common in bureaucratic environments and can also hinder the adoption of new technologies. This makes it more difficult for tech leaders in industry to meet the evolving customer needs promptly and effectively. And this bureaucracy and pace is further impacted by a lack of actionable data, metrics and insight on the actual cost of resistance.
In our work with clients, we are often asked to estimate the cost of non-action. In one case, we found that the months of decision-making actually had the twice the cost of the proposed budget for the CTO’s initiative. Having the data really helps.
While tech leaders in startups, scale-ups and tech-first companies may face the same or similar regulatory compliance challenges as tech leaders in Industry, the former’s agility and speed of technology delivery means they can often navigate these challenges well. For tech leaders in industry, their old legacy systems and internal bureaucracy make the situation far more challenging. Needing to comply with stringent regulations can slow down the development and adoption and implementation of new features and services.
In addition, navigating and complying with these regulations consumes substantial resources, which could otherwise be used for more customer impact. And of course, non-compliance with regulations can result in financial penalties and damage to the company’s reputation, both of which could have a negative impact on customer trust and value.
Tech leaders in established industries often rely on a mix of in-house, offshore, and vendor providers for product development, design, and technology. This mixed model presents a unique set of challenges. Effective collaboration between different teams, especially when they are geographically dispersed or working in different time zones, can be challenging. Miscommunication can lead to errors, inefficiencies, delays in technology delivery and spiralling costs. Maintaining consistent quality standards across all teams can be difficult. Ensuring all teams, both in-house and outsourced, understand and work productively towards the same strategic vision can seem almost impossible. And then there is the lack of visibility, measurement and monitoring of activity and impact across teams and vendors.
In Industry, tech leaders often have access to vast amounts of data, collected over years of operation. Unfortunately, this data does not typically measure technology investment and performance in a meaningful way.
As a consequence, many tech leaders lack real insight; many rely instead on delivery performance data which is usually qualitative, opinion-based and often lagging. This can lead to miscalculated investment and misguided decisions.
But that in-house data does contain the answers, if you know how to extract and analyse it correctly. Over the last number of years, with the development of data-driven engineering, startups and tech-first companies have adopted SaaS tools like our own, Implement.io, to monitor speed, quality and ROI for their teams. But in our work with tech leaders in industry, we have seen self-serve Saas solutions can be difficult to gain value from at scale. Indeed, this is why we created Implement Partners: to help set up and sustain technology delivery performance monitoring and visibility.
Let’s be under no illusion that there are many many more challenges that tech leaders face. But the issues articulated above are the ones that we most often hear about when working with tech leaders in Industry. Naturally, with our bias for data-driven technology delivery, we aim to meet these challenges.
For example, in our data-driven ROI approach we work to reveal the true cost of your specific legacy systems. We look at your operating costs, quality overheads, and engineering velocity impact. This gives the real cost of legacy. An immediate benefit is that specific, objective data on costs, and opportunity costs, tends to accelerate decision-making and inform better risk assessment.
The burden of regulatory compliance is often just a fact of life. But better technology delivery performance can help navigate it quicker. Again, accurate data on in-house and – especially – vendor performance is the most effective way to improve technology delivery performance. Data and evidence are the most effective tools in managing strategic partners and ROI.
We specialize in helping technology leaders use data and metrics to improve technology delivery performance and achieve better outcomes.
Want to learn more? Drop us a message and we’ll get back to you.
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