in 1994, you could buy one gigabyte of data storage for about $3,500. It occupied a hard drive that was appropriately nicknamed a ’brick’. Actually a real brick was smaller and considerably lighter.
Today, that amount of data will fit on a device smaller and less expensive than a lipstick.
The capacity of technology to make our lives different is staggering. But for business owners, using it effectively and wisely is one of today’s biggest challenges. I see many, many example of companies who dramatically under or over invest in technological solutions.
The over-investors are typically given bad advice by an under qualified ‘expert’ they have acquired along the way. The under-investors put cost before any other consideration.
In both cases, the business is damaged. Sometimes irreparably.
When you over invest, rarely can you afford to then immediately replace that piece of technology with another. The result is that you then design the business to the technology in order to justify the investment. Businesses designed to accommodate bad systems usually fail. Customers don’t care about your systems. They care about what you’re doing for them.
When a business owner under invests in technology, a number of things happen. The company is restricted in the ways it can service its customers, or analyze its performance, or communicate, or operate or expand. Or in some cases, all of the above.
Technology should be guided by a philosophy and must support a clear strategy.
Otherwise, whether you want the latest, the greatest or the cheapest, you’ll always be wrong.
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