What kind of transformational technology customer are you?

Imagine you finally got tickets to that amazing show that you've been dying to see. You take your seat thinking you'll have a great viewof the spectacle;the show beginsand just as it starts to get good everybody in front of you stands upand you can’t see because you’re the shortest in the crowd. Your view is blocked and now having overwhelming sense of FOMO.  This feeling of being left out thatsome of our business leaders feel when they read articles or hear podcasts about the disruptive or ‘transformative technologies’ like machine learning, RPA, AI, biometrics or IOT.  Business leaders look to technology leaders to help be the catalyst for implementing these magical solutions so they can feel confident they’re not the shortest in the crowd.

Within the insurance space these fears have been around for over a decade.  Theadvent of transformative technologies across many industries caused fears that insurance agents would be replaced by digital analogs and completely transform how insurance was sold.  Although there has been significant improvements of efficiencies and automation through many of these technologies, this largely has not come to fruition as many had thought. The insurance industry handles complicated processes and transactions requiring an element of humanity that technology has not figured out how to adequately replace, so those who have claimed theindustryis ripe for disruptionlike the Blockbuster to Netflix parallel might be a little misguided.  Although there have been hundreds of millions of dollars in write offs from technology investments gone south, there are nevertheless, opportunities which present themselves and it helps to be thoughtful about how one approachesa technology focusedsolution.

Hobby Shop Customer(R&D)

Maybe you have a budget that’s burning a hole in your pocket and the last tech sales pitch was very appealing. The price is reasonable and just maybe the technology could deliver enormous efficiencies or savings, but you won’t know unless you try.  This is a great position to be in because there might be little to no expectation of a massively beneficial outcome,or even if the project fails it might provide some valuable insights into what a realistic expectation of process improvement looks like.  However, beware that your ‘Dream Team’ partnership teammate might have selective memory about the promises which may have been conveyed at the outset of the project.  Sales folks and internal stakeholders alike want to project an appearance of success no matter what, so they might provide high level executive status updates where you’ll hear 90-100% success rates or efficiency.  Upon closer inspection of the details on the impressive power point slide might reveal a metric category that isn’t all that relevant.  Let’s say an AI tool is promising to read (OCR) a form, capture 25 data points and through the ‘AI’ know exactly which down flow workflow to execute.  You see a 100% accuracy result and your impressed and think great, let’s put it into production.  After two weeks you learn every form that came through required manual intervention and nothing was completely processed by the AI tool…you think what gives, you said 100% accuracy?  After further investigation you learn the tool was 100% accurate at reading the fields it could identify, but not once did it identify all 25 data points!  Things like this can erode confidence with partners and its largely through open and extremely candid communication that these situations can be avoided.  There’s no shame in making an exploratory spend, just make sure everyone’s expectations are in line.

Specific Need driven customer:  Clear objective narrow focus

If you find yourself in far more of a mission critical approach, failure is an outcome that should be avoided at all costs.  Attacking a specific problem can sometimes be an easier position to play from than the exploratory approach because there is more definition to the intended outcome. When considering transformative technologies for a specific purpose, having clearly defined processes in place is an ideal starting point.  Projects tryingto go from version ’zero to 1.0’and attempting to build processes on the fly in conjunction with implementingtransformative technologies solutions tend to have awful results. Wheretransformational technologies will provide the best outcome is for projects in which an established process is well defined and transformative technologies have a clear prescriptive use for improvement.These transformative tools can be very helpful; however, like any other tool it can be misused and have unintended consequences. Finding the right team with a clear vision of the expected outcome is critical to keeping any implementation of these technologies on track and driving expected outcomes that can be measured to validate the chief aims have been met.

All in Digital Transformation

Defining your trouble or expectations as a complete digital overhaul can be a very large and long undertaking.  Trying to get rid of file cabinets, Cobalt green screens, implementing api integrations and automating manually completed word and excel files might be the major objectives for the project.  The enticing visions of converting the entire operations department to a closet of blinking servers with complete automation is the nirvana of transformative technologies.  However, if you don’t see any competitors who have pulled it off, there is not likely a path to that outcome if you’re taking your first step into the transformative technology arena.The good news is that these much larger projects can be executed well through an orchestration of more manageable components.Like the specific need customer, a Big Bang style digital transformation project will be successful when the transformative technologies implemented have clear and prescriptive use for improvement. Facing challenges of product differentiation amongst a sea of options can prove to be guesswork if enough viable references aren't available, so doing your homework will pay dividends.