You're Lying: You Can Pay For It. You Just Choose Not To.
People lie through their teeth. They can afford it now, they just need to make spending on your small business a priority. What strategy do you employ?
People Lie Through Their Teeth
They do it all of the time. They tell me, "Yeah, things are really tight right now. I love your service but, yeah, I don't have the money right now." And that's a bald-faced lie.
They do have the money. They've got to pay for the gasoline in their car, don't they? Or for food? Or for their mortgage to keep a roof over their head? Or to pay their employees.
It's never a question of whether or not a business has the money to do something. They've got the money. It's just that they've prioritized it for something else. Rational people prioritize their expenses.
Prioritization isn't bad. In my line of work, though, it befuddles strategic thinking, because my potential clients can either pay me today, or pay me tomorrow, or next month, or next year, but eventually, they'll pay me, and inevitably, they'll pay me more if they don't prioritize me.
Yeah, it sounds pretty smug but here's the idea: either we spend a little money right now to safeguard the IT asset, or, we'll spend a lot of money later to recover the IT asset. Safeguarding and implementing basic risk management principles is a whole heckavalot cheaper than disaster recovery.
So they're lying. They're always lying! They could pay for it if they felt pain but they're not feeling pain now so it's not a priority. Once the pain hits, though, they're throwing money at me to solve their problem. To ease their pain. To make it go away.
And this just isn't tech. It's in any discipline where the consumer needs to prioritize spending today to have managed outcomes, whether or not that's automotive repair, dentistry, health care, chiropractic care, whatever. The consumer must be convinced to think strategically: in the long-run, it's less expensive to pay for mindful precaution than a panicked reaction.
Therefore, there are two approaches to honing your strategic decision-making (or, convincing togethers to prioritize spending on you right now):
1. You can create a condition where the consumer feels pain now. Ethics, anyone?
2. You can convince or educate the consumer to avoid future pain by prioritizing their spending now. Perhaps more ethical, less coercive.
Think about it. What's your strategy?
R
How to Evaluate Your Competitive Position
Small businesses don't need to simply react to external changes in the marketplace. They can plan for it. They can analyze and prepare for changes using SWOT. Here's a simple method for thinking about technology spending strategically.
In discussing technology strategy with undergraduates, I emphasized the use of a strategic analysis tool that goes by the name of SWOT. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats.
SWOT is a good, basic tool. It gives us perspective of our specific company, product, or business plan as it may react to external emergent market forces.
The internal analysis methods focus on the strategic position of your product as you perceive it in the context of strengths and weaknesses.
Strengths refers to the nature of your project that will give it an advantage over others; weaknesses refers to the disadvantages your project has that makes it vulnerable.
SWOT can be used to evaluate the external forces that threaten to impact your position. The question is: how will changes in externalities create both opportunities that enhance your strengths/position, or, diminish your strengths/position.
(A quick note on externalities ... these are changes that happen outside of you and your firm's control. Things like changes to consumer opinion and preferences, changes in tax or foreign policy, shifts in technology, industry regulations, surprise news events. This is stuff that you can anticipate but not necessarily control.)
Opportunities reflects changes in market dynamics brought on by shifts in externalities; threats are conditions that could harm your position should the externalities come to pass.
It's a simple tool and it's been taught in business schools since the 1970's. It's not something you just conduct when putting together your business plan. It's something you constantly revisit for two facts will always hold constant:
Your product/service will change over time;
Externalities that shape the success of your product/service will change over time.
Change happens. And your technology strategy should adapt accordingly. In fact, we measure technology generations in about nine months; SWOT may be a tool you're using on a bi-annual or six-month basis to re-evaluate how changes influence your spending plan.
There's a good reason for this. Technology projects take a long time to implement. Over the implementation and adoption period, a SWOT analysis is a litmus test. A reality check. Is this still the right plan? Is it good to continue spending and strategic investment in this direction? Or is there a change - a shift - that's about to happen, that will influence adoption and use?
It's the middle of September 2014 and Apple just released the new iPhone6, capable of NFC (Near-Field Communication) and a new payment system called ApplePay. Over its introductory weekend, Apple has sold 10 million of their new phones - that's a record, even for Apple.
Now use the SWOT. If your in the middle of implementing a technology solution for your company like POS (Point of Sale) systems that rely/depend on magnetic swipes found on the back of credit cards, you're already at a technological pivot. An externality will now start shaping consumer behavior and preferences to start using NFC instead of magswipes for credit card transitions. It also stands to reason that Samsung and Google will ramp-up Droid solutions like Google Wallet to complete.
So, a couple of questions for you - the small business owner - at this critical time:
1. How rapidly do you expect your consumer's adoption rates of this technology? How does that present an opportunity or threat to your business?
2. How could the early internal adoption of NFC improve your product/service's competitive position? What are the risks/consequences to your business for later adoption?
3. What are the potential security consequences? How would your employees need to be trained?
4. How could the shift from magswipe to NFC influence your brand and delight everyone?
Thinking like this, applying SWOT when there's an obvious change in externalities, is a strategic application of technology spending. It allows you to think about, project, anticipate, and respond constructively rather than react. How could you apply SWOT today, tomorrow, next week, next month, next quarter?
R
Delight Everyone
How is your technology investment delighting everyone? Or enabling your employees to delight your customer?
Wow, a Positive Experience ...
I get my cell phone service from AT&T and I'm absolutely delighted.
AT&T delights me.
Why?
Through their app on my phone, I can view my account and all of the devices associated with it. I can see their current usage levels and set monitors and alerts on activities. I can review my charges and statements. I can enable and disable features within my plan, and even upgrade my plan directly from my phone.
On their website, I have even greater control over my experience with AT&T. Previous account statements, history, analytics, insight into usage patterns and behaviors.
When I was interested in getting the next generation of iPhone, iPhone 6, I could perform a trade-in check right from the device itself. It made me an offer right there. It walked me through plan upgrades and the purchase. Once placed, AT&T shot me an order number that could be tracked on their website, showing me the status of the order and eventual delivery status.
Afterwards, they followed-up with a text survey to learn how my experience was.
Why Delighting Matters
Delighting is cool!
AT&T delights me. They use technology to transform my experience with them from just "carrier" to "partner". I feel like I've got a quality, premium experience with them ... and they never had to lift a human finger to make it happen.
And I rarely speak to anyone over the phone or in their stores. Even then, they greet me in person and enter my information into a tablet that tracks my need and order in the sales queue; they're always friendly and efficient.
Technology investments that delight your customers are some of the best strategic investments you can make. Using technology to change client experiences from "hard/difficult" to "easy/convenient" is the differentiation that'll set you apart from the competition. It's real value added to the relationship. How we use technology to make others feel is important. Technology plays a big role here.
How are You Delighting Your Customers?
If you're a small business owner, ask yourself:
- How are your technology investments delighting your customers, every day?
- How is your technology allowing your employees to delight your customers?
- How is your technology enabling both employees and customers to delight others?
- How does a singular technology investment make just one aspect of your business relationship faster, more reliable, more accurate, and more self-directed, so people feel inclusive and as a partner, rather than frustrated and disenfranchised?
R