Shiny New Objects

We all get caught up in the glow of some really cool white paper (which have now become more advertising briefs rather than academic briefs) that tells us about a new solution that is out there.  We like shiny new objects that we are told will provide a needed service to our customers or provide us with the additional income that is needed to grow our business. When seeing something like this, we need to make sure that we have our sunglasses on that will allow us to see past the shiny and bright components and will allow us to see where the true value of the solution is.  This is a difficult question and answer to find and is dependent on how your business operates, what are your strategic priorities, and where do you want to be in the years to come. By the way, some of these solutions take so long to implement that the impressiveness might have worn off. We need to look at our business and identify where the gaps, opportunities and challenges are and focus our investments in those solutions that will solve for those as we have already done the due diligence through SWOT analysis to determine these were the opportunities or weaknesses that we need to invest in.  We can not skip the important analysis phase when we are introduced to a new solution. Based on a new technology or new market focus on a service, there will always be new opportunities that are worth our time invested in determining if there is a significant enough return that could come from the investment.

We need to effectively voice our challenges to our solution providers and make sure they are making their investments in not only the functionality that we currently need but in the implementation methods of this functionality.  We might not know what we are going to want tomorrow, and it might also be something that only has value if it is able to get to market within a few weeks rather then months or years.