Building a successful technology business requires an organization to have a clear strategy that connects several dots. From Market Place Relationships, Technology and Product Capabilities, Empathizing and Understanding Client Needs and Building Successful Business Models that create win-win-win relationships.
Strategizing in a dynamic ever changing market place requires several sub-strategies working with each other. These sub-strategies are united in their orientation by a strong team that delivers value and ROI to customers and fundamentally use that value to drive the strategy train to create a superior business organization.
These sub-strategies can be powered by groups within a single business unit or groups working across multiple business units. In fact, it is entirely possible that different process teams may work together simultaneously powering market place strategies focused on different markets and solutions.
To a client looking at the organization, what is visible is a perfectly choreographed interaction with a relationship manager that offers a compelling business and technology stack that comprises of a well defined problem space, a compelling well positioned solution based on a product and technology platform that delivers value at each level of the stack.
The business itself is organized into technology, product and solution groups simultaneously working on multiple business opportunities through carefully orchestrated business processes.
Such a customer focused organization delivers the rich feeling of a customized solution with the efficiency of a generalized product.
You can build a customer focused organization and yet win in the competitive market place through a generalized delivery platform. Here are some useful guidelines to follow:
- Clearly define the market places in terms of problem space, competition and your own solution position. Make a list !
- Have a dedicated business development manager well versed with at least 1, possible more of the solutions located close to the market
- Put a solid workflow management process in place to receive problem statements and create solution proposals driven by the business development manager acting in concert with the customer
- Build agile solution teams that build customized solutions quickly from verticalized solution platforms
- Build strong technology and product groups that work with solution teams and ship frequent product releases every 6-8 weeks
- Build a powerful support group with a mature director that can provide strong pre and post-sales support
- Invest in R&D, raise R&D funding and look out for collaboration opportunities.
- Build a strong and disciplined inside sales force
That for you is a text book approach for building successful technology companies.
About The Author(s):
Prasad Bulusu is a CFO at Sankhya Technologies Private Limited. He is a blogger and offers consulting services to hi-tech organizations. He also mentors startups. You may reach him at prasad@sankhya.com
Gopi Kumar Bulusu is the CEO and Chief Technologist at Sankhya Technologies Private Limited. He may be reached at gopi@sankhya.com
