Apply the best technology and your problems will be solved… Right? Better think again.
During these last days of the year I was catching up on my study topics and came across a video recorded last November of Sorin Caian, President of the world federation of management consulting institutes, CMC-Global, giving the opening talk at the annual conference of CMC-Jordan. His talk was about the challenges facing the management consulting profession in an increasingly automated world, where change moves at a dizzying speed. For those who can watch the video, I highly recommend it.
One sentence from the talk kept going around in my head:
“Now there are many people who believe that by installing the latest technology their problems will be solved…”
The sentence was part of an argument about what CMC-Global calls Consulting 4.0: the role the professional management consultant must play in giving context and guidance to those who lead organizations, in the face of the wave of information, options and solutions offered in a digitized business ecosystem. These solutions to business problems are themselves changing and evolving at an impressive pace.
The challenge for the professional management consultant, as Mr. Caian put it, is to stay ahead of these changes, that is, to keep learning constantly and, at the same time, to help our clients make the right decisions in the middle of this ocean of information and options that floods us through the internet, social media, conferences, books, whitepapers, webinars and so on.
Mr. Caian’s talk reminded me of several conversations I have had in recent months with clients and prospects in Central America and the Caribbean about a mistaken and, unfortunately, very common perception: that if you install and launch the latest technology, be it ERP, workflows, RPA, machine learning, analytics, e-learning or any other, all business problems will solve themselves, which is false.
In fact, even with the latest and best technology, you can end up the same as before, or even much worse.
The best technology, badly applied or without purpose, will not make things better…
Whoever recommends technology indiscriminately does their clients no favors, without being clear about the “what for”, the “where”, the “how” and above all the human factor: “who will use it and what its impact will be”. I am not talking about any particular software house, type of technology or implementation team over another.
The need to think and understand “offline” before talking about technology is a universal golden rule, and ignoring it can have serious consequences for those who make decisions in their organizations.
As it happens, during this year that is about to end, I have seen ERP implementations that underuse resources and make processes more expensive, slower or worse; analytics software perfectly implemented to produce indicators but unused or fallen into irrelevance; and even first-class technology solutions, correctly implemented, that fail to gain traction on the problems they were supposed to solve, because they were not aligned with the human factor of the organizations where they were implemented.
This brings me back to the concepts Mr. Caian expressed in his video, which, in my own free interpretation, say that the role of the professional management consultant is to guide clients so they can discern the best decision in today’s ocean of information, making sure they navigate correctly through all the options technology puts at their disposal, without first forgetting the “offline” part, which is the most important part of any improvement process, competitive strategy and problem solving.
In the year about to begin, for initiatives that involve technology in any of its forms, include the following New Year’s resolutions in your planning process:
- Always write a requirements document: It is very common for a system or a new technology to be implemented only at the pace set by the manufacturer or the developer who won the contract. Always produce a document stating what you expect the software or equipment to do in your processes or, in the case of analytics, specify, ideally with examples, what kinds of decisions or questions the new technology must be able to answer. Whatever it is, technology is not an end in itself; it serves a purpose. Make sure you are clear about that purpose and communicate it widely to your technology provider, preferably before they bid, so they consider your input in what they present to you.
- If possible, do your requirements analysis independently and impartially: This is not always possible, since sometimes there are very specific technologies, synergies specific to one provider, or situations where few people know a given topic. But when it is possible, it is good to have the opinion of someone qualified who is not commercially involved in the decision. Something like QA (quality assurance), not of the software, but of the analysis prior to contracting a technology solution.
- Have a specific strategy to manage the human factor when implementing a new solution: One of the most frequent reasons why perfectly implemented technology fails or produces results different from those expected is people. Whether through prior planning, change management or measures to create new habits in the users or beneficiaries of the new technology (who are not always the same…), the absence or underestimation of the human factor can ruin all the effort and resources invested in an excellent idea or initiative.
- Mix “low-tech” initiatives with your technology implementation to start seeing short-term results: Avoid, “like the plague”, the excuse that nothing can change until the new system or technology arrives. If you have already decided to make technology-enabled changes, think about what you can do now, in the short term, that contributes to or aligns with the final results you expect from the technology. Common solutions include starting work on the “offline” part of your initiative: changes to policies and procedures, transitional processes aligned with the future process, shaping the organizational culture in line with the values and behaviors the new systems will require, using fast-deploying cloud applications until the permanent technologies arrive, and so on. There is nothing worse than announcing a change for the better and then having people perceive that nothing happens for an extended period. Hence the importance of having an implementation STRATEGY, NOT JUST A PLAN.
The most knowledgeable people on the automation and robotization of the workplace estimate that artificial intelligence capable of human-like decisions will not be available before 2050. If these optimistic predictions were true, we would have at least 35 more years in which human beings will remain responsible for evaluating, analyzing and filtering increasingly complex and changing information in order to make the main business decisions of their organizations. Twenty-first-century management and strategy consultants must be there, ready to face the challenge of a digitized environment.
Organizations such as CMC-Global are already working to ensure that twenty-first-century management consultants have the professionalism, ethics, experience and caliber required by today’s challenges, and by those that business, government and civil society organizations will face in the future.
In many of the strategic optimization initiatives of the coming years, technology will be present, but on its own it will not solve the problems; the right decisions, made long before anyone even talks about technology, will, ensuring success through prior analysis and comprehensive strategies.
Start the year by reviewing your technology initiatives and make sure you have all the bases covered.
I welcome your comments, experiences and feedback on this topic. Do you have something to share and add to the discussion?
From our archive. Originally published in Spanish on LinkedIn on 30 December 2016; translated into English. Read the original (in Spanish).