Transform Your Business and Gain a Competitive Advantage Through Technology Modernization

For any business to be successful, it must rise above or at least keep up with the competition. Many businesses looking to accomplish this focus their attention on strategy. And though having a solid strategy is important, most businesses need more than strategy adjustments alone; they need technology modernization.

Businesses go through many growing pains and challenges, and technology plays a key role in solving their modern day problems. If you’re stuck in systems and technologies of the past, you’re not able to fine tune your business based on its current needs, leaving you a step behind the competition.

Follow along as we further explore the importance of technology modernization, the roadblocks and limitations companies face when trying to modernize, and how a partner like TruVs can support businesses who are working through these challenges.

The Importance of Technology Modernization

There are many ways companies wish to progress, including sales growth, improving their bottom line, reducing risk, or making operations more efficient – all objectives that technology modernization can play a key role in. This is not to say that technology automatically brings you this advantage (you still have to get your strategy right), but without the right technology, you don’t even give yourself the chance to be on the same playing field as your competitors. 

For Example:

The more a big company like Walmart sells, the better they do as a company. In order to do so, they need to keep expanding their warehouses to store increased inventory. Technology plays a huge role in the execution of bringing in more inventory, tracking it, and organizing it effectively. By using technology such as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), Walmart is able to reduce the amount of time and effort it takes to address their inventory needs. This in turn saves them money and streamlines operations.

Common Obstacles to Technology Modernization

Many companies are interested in technology modernization, but there are a number of obstacles that can cloud their vision or halt their progress.

1) Lack of Education

There are many companies that simply don’t know or understand how technology modernization can benefit their business. They may have heard about some of the technologies competitors are using or come across them during their own research, but it often takes a consultation about these technologies to grasp their potential and application. 

2) Cost 

A lot of companies believe that technology modernization will cost too much and, as a result, end up leaving the idea behind. In some cases, this may be true. But until you explore the different technologies, how much they truly cost, and how they can save you money down the line, there’s no reason to dismiss the idea.

3) Lack of skills 

For some companies that don’t have strong technical talent, it can be difficult for the leaders and team members to understand how certain technologies can be of use and what it takes to implement it. Without this knowledge, it becomes difficult to execute on modernization. That’s why it’s valuable to work with a partner you can trust and has the right business knowledge mixed with technical expertise.

If a business is trying to overcome these obstacles in-house, it oftentimes can be overwhelming and unfruitful, leading a company to abandon its goals of modernizing. Luckily, there are strategic partners you can work with to keep the needle moving for your company toward modernization.

How TruVs Addresses Obstacles to Technology Modernization

As a business consulting company with a technological focus, we have experts at all levels of the modernization process. Not only do we have a thorough understanding of how to develop successful strategies, but we have the knowledge needed to choose the right technology and implement it to bring those strategies to life. TruVs also helps you augment your existing staff to support the changes that modernization requires. 

For companies that are hesitant about switching technology platforms or implementing new ones, we conduct a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis showing the advantages of engaging with new technologies. Through fixed bid deliverables, our clients know exactly what they’re paying for and what the end result will be. One of the key steps in producing results for our clients is a Solution Building Exercise.

Here’s a breakdown of what our Solution Building Exercise looks like:

• Pre-meeting
  • TruVs learns about a company’s industry, culture, problems, and goals.
• Meeting:
  • The business partner and tech partner from the client company both attend.
  • TruVs asks a number of questions about the problems they’re facing through an exploratory interview. 
  • TruVs inquires about what the client company has tried in the past and what has worked and what hasn’t worked.
• Within one week after meeting:
  • TruVs collects and analyzes information gained from the interview.
  • TruVs proposes a solution based on the client company’s priorities which includes a high-level overview of what their solution would look like, as well as detailed steps of implementation.
• After the company accepts the proposed solution:
  • The solution is designed together.
  • TruVs makes sure the company fully understands the scope and requirements.
  • TruVs outlines the technical architecture of the solution.
• Implementation:
  • The company can either choose TruVs or an outside company to implement the solution.
  • If the company chooses TruVs, we will use a sprint process to achieve a minimal viable solution.

Generating Fast Results with a Minimal Viable Solution

It doesn’t take years to modernize with technology. In 2-4 week sprints, TruVs can deliver a minimal viable solution for your company. Meaning, we focus on the fundamental features of a product that need to go live in order for your company to gain benefits from it. 

Once we identify the minimal viable solution, we get it to market quickly. From there, we can focus on incremental development and add features that bring even more value to our clients. By taking an agile approach, we develop small features quickly and at the highest of quality. This way, we are able to gather good feedback from our clients and constantly improve the product.

Another key advantage of using an agile process is the team itself. An agile team always structures its efforts around changing business criteria and priorities of a company’s immediate needs. This level of flexibility makes sure that we are only delivering what a company needs within a certain duration of time. As priorities change, an agile team is self-managed, highly efficient, and delivers high-quality results.

For Example:

TruVs worked with a big Fortune 100 company that wanted to implement Microsoft SharePoint into their online portal. They tried with a different partner but were unhappy with the progress and quality of the deliverable and almost pulled the plug on the project altogether. At that point, we stepped in and created a proof of concept that showed them what they could achieve and the steps it would take to get there. This was well received and we got to work on the deliverable. To this day, the system we implemented is still being used and has not needed any additional changes to the functionality.

Limitations and Considerations Around Technology Modernization

• Not every technology is mature, and technologies such as AI and ML are not necessarily mature for every industry.

• For businesses that are very people-centric, technology may not be able to replace these roles. However, technology could still be used to make people’s lives easier in these cases.

• If your business is mature, your profits are great, and you don’t have any issues, there may not be a need to disrupt your systems with different technology. Unless business benefits from a new technology are clearly articulated, a disruption may actually cause more harm than good. 

• The timing for modernization isn’t always right. Sometimes businesses try to modernize too early when the market isn’t ready and don’t see the results they were looking for.

Technology Modernization is Achievable with the Right Partner

The challenge for many businesses is finding the right partner who can understand their problems and build solutions to address them with technology. That’s where TruVs can prove to be invaluable.

We help enterprises at a very minimal cost, have the resources to educate them, and provide tangible proofs of concept before executing on a new product.

This way, a company’s risk is minimal and they spend very little time and money to understand how technology can bring great benefits to their company. Once they have a clear understanding of everything involved, we help them make the right decision for their company and build out a rock-solid implementation strategy.

So with all this in mind, what’s stopping you from modernizing your business?

To learn more about how TruVs can bring your business into the future, contact us today.