What do companies really value?
Having called on, sold to and consulted with various businesses around the globe it still fascinates me how diverse businesses’ values can be. Some would think that businesses would or should value the same three or four core principles. If you are one of those people who thinks this, you’d be wrong. The values can be a number of things. To some businesses it’s their products, for others it’s their people, bottom line, or market share. Of course, these are not the only ones. There’s an almost certainty that what a company list as its values is as vast as the number of companies there are. If you polled the employees of a company, whether large or small, and asked, “what does your company value?” the responses would span a broad spectrum of different messages. I would guess that if you polled a group of key customers of a certain company the answers would cross that same spectrum of subjectivity
Should a company value its technology platform?
There’s no escaping the answer…YES! The results are in and while you may shrug and not completely agree (here’s a nod and a wink to the investment community), a company that places high value in its technology platform is better able to act, react, adapt and focus more so than businesses that disvalue their technology. Take a moment to think about the place technology holds in our personal lives. It is becoming, if not already is, essential. So, why should a company view technology differently than they may have in the past? A company’s technology platform is a competitive necessity, but it should also be a competitive advantage, period!
Why?
Human beings tend to like, some would even say love, most all value simplicity! It’s like a bell curve with, oh let’s say engineers at one end and sales people at the other. Regardless, simplicity can drive behavior. There isn’t a person, an employee, or a customer in the world that enjoys a task that requires more effort, more key strokes, more phone calls, more emails or more work than necessary. No one ever said, “you mean I can be more productive with less? Nah, I’ll stay with the harder way.” No company has ever had a new or returning customer that prefers a Rube Goldberg approach to buying. Companies that use technology that simplifies the buying process for customers plus simplifies the required tasks of their people to help customers will always create immense value over those who don’t, period!
