Business Augmentation – Back to Basic

I was asked a couple of weeks ago what is this augmentation I keep talking about, and why does it apply to businesses? Augmentation is not new, if you think about augmented reality, augment glasses, augmented amusement park rides – yes they exist!

The reason I apply it to businesses today is simply that like the other examples above they are seeking to maximize existing components and add additional capability and or scale to it that can adapt to their current market environment. Anyone familiar with augmented reality knows this is a powerful tool which can understand the current context of what you see and add additional information to it such as where a bus is headed to, availability of properties and reviews of your favourite restaurants. Now in the context of these examples you would say well of course it has to use the current capability we would be blind otherwise (literally!), fair enough, but why not use the same concepts for business? The current platforms work, it is not a case of them being no longer fit for purpose, more likely they are functionally or scale limited by the platforms they were built on and if a business knew that by adding to their existing capability they could actually extend the life of their assets and as such turn a depreciating item into a value creation item they might change their views on them.

Woah … what? Ok let’s go through an example. A business has an existing telephony system they would look to replace it or upgrade to a new platform when it is either end of life (financially), has reached maximum capacity or last but not least is no longer able to meet the functionality needs of the business. In any of these circumstances you might think a business needs to request quotations for new platforms, and previously this is most likely what a business would do. Consider equally businesses looking to grow through acquisition in a market where just about everyone has some form of video conferencing, yet there is always that concern on integration cost of communication platforms. In both of these examples any vendor would love you to rip and replace the old assets and convert to a new platform, but this only adds cost to your business which would be better spent on systems and tools upgrades/integration which tend to be more customized. Hence having access to a virtual “bridge” that allows you to leverage the assets of the existing business that can be integrated whilst using cloud based IP Telephony or video for new or temporary users/sites provides an alternative avenue and drives a philosophy of business led outcomes. i.e. decide what your business needs to do first and assume the technology is there to make it viable second.

Equally the current economic environment with its rapid changes of growth and decline across multiple markets at different times has resulted in concerns on making the right decision and timing of business decisions. Particularly when it relates to ICT investments where businesses are struggling to understand how they can find a balance between driving business improvement or growth goals against managing cost and mitigating risk. The Business Augmentation approach here creates a fundamental shift in defining the business outcome first, knowing that technology will adapt to your requirements rather than being limited by your current ICT capabilities both in terms of functionality and cost.  Think about it for a moment – how often have you considered that accelerating the growth of your business through expanded ICT and other resources could derive your next wave of growth, yet at the same time being concerns on managing risk. What if the market changes? What if competitors flood the market? What if my supply chain can’t keep up? Business Augmentation is about removing this risk, leveraging existing assets, adding new functionality – preferably through the cloud – with the confidence to unwind that functionality at a moment’s notice should market dynamics require it.

I am a big advocate of Business Augmentation mainly because it directs the discussion between people and technology where it belongs – Technology as an enabler to business and consumers and that through reducing (or even better, removing!) the risk businesses can create, innovate and drive growth with greater confidence. Technology change is increasingly regarded as a disabler as “rip and replace” or full transformation of platforms offers little or highly complex roll back to legacy platform options. Imagine for moment that your ICT architecture was linked to cloud based platforms which were used to facilitate your growth, and as you continued to grow you realized your business had established a new baseline, this could then justify longer term investment and encourage the business to stretch further with the confidence that it was suddenly in a stronger position to adapt to change.

Now this is all great in principle but we need to be able to realize these ideas, the great news is these platforms are out there today, whether it be around Collaboration, Cloud Computing, Networking and Security, we simply need to drive Service Providers, vendors and SI’s to be more disruptive and challenge the norms of upfront payments linked to capex towards a more sustainable and elastic business model which will deliver self fulfilling growth as risks become more manageable and businesses in turn take increasingly creative steps forward.

Challenge yourself, your business and your ICT relationships to change the way we work by leveraging Augment capabilities and you will quickly find there are a growing number of opportunities to create, innovate and grow your business! Hence get back to basics define your need and challenge your ecosystem to deliver!

Transform, Transition and Augmentation – Bingo

The other day I was cleaning out some of my old presentations which I have delivered through the years and something occurred to me, our business models have truly evolved! Yes I know, that is such a surprise and like welcome back to reality Nathan! However stay with me for a little longer, historically people would talk about transformation in order to achieve the results the business was looking for so as to adapt to long term business or market changes. Then we saw a growing trend to look at transition as businesses realized that transformation could lead to either greater costs or significant business disruption especially during increasing periods of change. Now we have entered into a new era as businesses seek to maximize their existing assets and avoid expensive rip and replace strategies in the current market environment where the only constant seems to be change, an era which I have defined as “Augmentation”.

When we talked about Transformation we would traditionally jump to outsourcing as a means of execution, I mean transforming your business on your own seemed near impossible, but by outsourcing key functions that were not core to your business allowed you to focus on managing the change with the outsourcing partner providing the people and systems support. outsourcing is still an option that people consider but increasingly less as they look to alternative options providing greater controls on costs.

Over time though we realized that transformation became more complicated and less likely to succeed due to rapid globalization, market changes and increasingly complex supply chain and customer engagements. As such it seemed a “partner” providing managed services was best suited, providing a degree of flexibility to increase predictability in your operational cost and target certain synergies in IT and communications platforms. Managed services saw a rapid growth in demand and similar to outsourcing, managed services continue to be in demand albeit reduced as businesses again look to new options for supporting fluctuating business change.

The current era of augmentation has been driven by the advent of cloud computing an opportunity for businesses to find services which are more flexible with their business needs but equally helps to maximize their existing investments.  cloud computing has not realized its full potential as yet, but new providers are helping business to realize the benefits of cloud computing through services which augment with existing platforms providing greater flexibility and scalability than previously seen.

What makes this whole evolution exciting is the waves of change are shortening, to clarify the window of opportunity for outsourcing companies has clearly passed, as has the peak of opportunity for managed service providers and now the question is how long will cloud based service providers last for. I am not saying that outsourcing and managed services will cease to exist, however they are no longer the only solution(s), but merely a part of, or provide a supporting role to the challenge businesses are looking for a solution to.

So we are no longer looking to transform, nor transition, but today it is about augmentation to maximize existing assets - which in the current environment no major surprises there. However before you nod your head feeling comfortable you are on the right track, we are awaiting the next wave which will be focused on Business Process Evolution or BPE. This will be achieved through the traditional two pillars of IT and communications finally merging through the common element of virtualization. Hence the title ... Bingo! Although this sounds like a technology puzzle game there is so much change that the key is to be able to adapt to change, anticipate it and recognize that traditional ways of working will no longer suffice. The resulting change however, will provide businesses an opportunity to redefine their business objectives first and foremost with a choice of partners to deliver on the ICT execution of those objectives.

I know many managers will read this and consider this a visionary story … however consider for a moment the diversity of software and next gen providers leveraging standard interfaces to bridge these two pillars of IT and Comm’s together. Their lack of legacy is allowing the acceleration of these types of solutions which will result in businesses focusing on business outcomes with an integrated IT and Comm’s platform that will scale with their changing business needs, no outsourcing or long term managed service required.

So what should you take away from this article? This is a message to all those feeling comfortable bobbing on those legacy waves, now is the time to start thinking about what is required to adapt to the next set of waves, because these waves of change are coming faster and if you don’t anticipate the coming changes someone else may end up deciding the future of your business for you. With that get your bingo cards ready because the next 12 months you are going to hear a lot about these accelerating waves of change and you will need to have the right attitude to survive and hopefully even succeed.