Sometimes I think we all forget that while technology helps us to solve problems, we have to first identify and clearly define the problem we are trying to solve. As consumers we often tend to purchase technology because we want it, not necessarily because we need it. We buy because it’s the “latest and greatest” or because it can do more, but these reasons don’t match up to any problems we currently have with our existing technology.
This type of conspicuous consumption has fueled economies since, well, forever. Of course, in uncertain economic times (like the present) we as consumers usually take pause and finally do ask ourselves if technology purchases are really serving a direct benefit and addressing a real problem we currently have. Ironically, however, another form of consumer (not the individual one like you or I) exists that suffers from some of the same impulse-buying and lack of forethought that we do. Their purchases, on the other hand, often run into the tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of dollars. And the people making those purchases are often themselves paid well to behave in just the opposite fashion of their spending habits. The consumers I am referring to are businesses.
As someone who has spent nearly a quarter of a century working with businesses and their technologies, I still find myself amazed by the number of times organizations acquire technologies with little to no idea of how they are going to actually use them. They spend large amounts of money investing in technologies, only look at them post-purchase and collectively say “now what?” While the technologies have changed and evolved over time, the acquisition of technology still occurs and results in a solution struggling to find a problem. Here are two such technologies I see this occurring with quite regularly lately, with one hitting very close to home on a personal level.
- Cloud-based solutions. Everything seems to be moving to “The Cloud” lately. Centralized, externally-hosted solutions are intended to generally solve very specific problems, such as:
- Reducing the cost of infrastructure. Less hardware and/or software to maintain, less network bandwidth and reduced licensing.
- Reduce the cost of operations. Less human resources needed to maintain infrastructure.
- Ease access to corporate data and applications.
However, I am amazed by how many people currently consider moving to cloud-based solutions that currently are not experiencing these problems or will not see these problems occurring any time in the future. In fact, in these cases the cost of migrating from in-house to the cloud will likely cost significantly more in both the short- and long-term.
- Device Management solutions. This is the one I said hits close to home for me, working in the industry directly. Typically, device management platforms today can help to solve a number of issues around mobile devices and –
- Asset tracking and reporting;
- Security configuration and enforcement;
- Application management;
- Identification and control over both corporate-issued devices and personal devices accessing corporate resources.
Here again, however, I regularly meet with organizations “post-purchase” of device management solutions only to discover that they really don’t know what problem (if any) they are trying to solve. In many cases, there is really no strategic direction/planning around mobile devices. In all of these cases, questions directed at the customer regarding what they hope to leverage from device management are met with responses like “we have no idea; what do you think?”
Technology is an enabler; it helps us to do things more effectively, or at a lower cost. Technology is not an automatic solution, however. In order for it to solve a problem, there has to be a problem in place and the technology needs to be looked at to validate whether or not it is, in fact, the solution. Whether it is a new dryer or a device management platform, the same principles apply.
). Here goes…
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