Thought Leadership From Industry Peers

Five Steps to Consider While Choosing a Technology Innovation Partner

Scott Nugent CCO Ignitho Technologies

Why Innovation is a necessity?

According to CIOs and business leaders in an enterprise world, innovation is no longer considered as a luxury but a necessity. History shows that innovation has been the key differentiator in rapid success or decline of an enterprise. Consider Kodak, an American technology company that produces camera-related products with its historic basis on film-based photography. As history has it, they reacted poorly to the changing consumer behavior and business environments and underestimated the potential of digital photography, an innovation which later disrupted the entire industry and replaced their film-based photography.

In an enterprise context, innovation is normally a result of an immediate requirement, an evolving trend or a popular new technology platform, or a convergence of all. For example, look at how the enterprise landscape was revolutionized by the coupling of a need, with a new technology trend, such as gaming, social media and the emergence of super-powerful smartphones and tablets. When smart devices (mobiles and tablets) entered the enterprise market, it changed and gave a new innovative dimension to the customer experience.

According to a KPMG survey, the top 3 priorities for Digital Leaders are:

1. Developing innovative IT products

2. Delivering stable IT

3. Enhancing customer experience

The complexities involved in Innovation

Have you ever thought about the complexities involved in innovation?

The innovation itself is usually enormous and coupled with developing a new technology or product is really an uphill task. There is also an endless list of competitors who are domain and industry experts.

For an enterprise with a disruptive idea, they need to overcome all sorts of challenges especially the ones mentioned above. For these enterprises, the only solution left is to find a partner whom they could work together and play each other’s strength.

Still relatively unknown in an enterprise context, the Lean approach to Technology Innovation in the Enterprise sector may just be the golden ticket for CIOs and innovation leaders to help accelerate the pace of effective enterprise innovation.

While clearly recognizing the need to accelerate the pace of effective enterprise innovation, enterprise CIOs face practical challenges using big bang approach to all technology innovation. A survey with over 100 CIOs has thrown up the following top issues.

Endless ideas on innovation

In an enterprise context, finding the right idea and nurturing that one idea is key a to success. Innovation in an enterprise is often not a problem of finding ideas. In many scenarios, the CIO or innovation group is bombarded with a plethora of ideas coming from various internal sources. The problem therefore really lies in finding the necessary bandwidth to nurture these ideas, to run alongside larger transformation initiatives and business-as-usual.

The limits on budget

CIOs and other leaders in the industry are willing to spend on projects that have a guaranteed ROI. The leap towards a big bang approach to innovation is still a distant dream for many of them because of the scant budget. So, it is mostly not the lack of such disruptive ideas that affect technological innovation but the critical issue of funds that do harm.

Parameters for Innovation Partnership

The common criteria that CIOs consider while adopting one such big bang approach towards business success include money, exertion, production, and achievement. Innovation has become the norm.

Innovation service providers are on the rise, but the right alliance is hard to choose. Here are some of the different thoughts one needs to keep in mind before going out to choose that suitable innovation partner:

  1. Global presence and reach: Because innovation, is a significant step in technological advancements, the selection of the innovation partner needs to be made with great caution. Enterprises should prefer partners with a global delivery model which ensures increased transparency and visibility and creates a multi-cultural work environment. The global delivery model brings together talents from across the globe, enriching productivity and effectiveness.
  2. Technical expertise: Today, with many CIOs showing openness towards innovation and encouraging innovative ideas from everyone alike, it is very important to cherish the right idea which will become productive. It is highly important to welcome those with technical expertise in handling and qualifying the right idea.
  3. Rapid application development: To match the pace of technological advancements enterprises need to co-ideate and co-create with the stakeholders in the business to come up with ideas that quicken the pace of production and development. Today’s IT landscape preaches and promotes customer satisfaction. Rapid application development model fosters customer satisfaction as it produces rapid prototypes and enables continuous iterations improving customer experience.
  4. Scalability: A very significant parameter is scalability which enables the handling of the growing amount of work by adding resources to the system. The fast-evolving IT landscape mandates the need for scalable services. For instance, the scalable cloud implementation is a conspicuous shift in the way IT companies work.
  5. Budget and the limitations: Often the fund allotted for innovative diversions by any enterprise is minimal and this drives most IT Directors to abandon innovative ideas. The important thing is partnerships that dispatch innovative solutions on a limited budget without compromising on quality.

The Right Innovation Partner

Being a significant norm of today’s IT landscape and the growth of startups, the call for innovation cannot be left unheard. To convene for an innovation partnership would involve joining hands over a decision that will work towards the failure or the triumph of the enterprise.

Ignitho Technologies, a US-based Innovation led Digital Application Services Company, with its offices in New York, USA & London, UK, and its innovation labs and delivery development centers in Richmond, VA, Brighton, UK and Kochi, India has the differentiating ability to start small and deliver quick outcomes which are scalable, for the web, mobile and cloud. Our innovation pods are another disruptive initiative that builds agile pods with cross-functional teams delivering faster prototypes and digital solutions.

Ignitho’s unique selling proposition is the Frugal Technology Innovation methodology- “the ability to deliver more and better with less,” which empowers CIOs to take the leap towards innovation. Moreover, our customers have the added advantage of leveraging the peer ecosystem of industry experts, including former CIOs and our co-founders who previously led critical projects for the likes of Accenture, Mindtree, Cognizant, and HP, as well as other senior professionals from the likes of Capgemini and Infosys. We deliver the same program rigor and approach to top quality, without high overhead costs.

In conclusion, CIOs must be careful about the innovation partnerships that they forge. The points discussed above are to be noted before choosing the right innovation partner who works in tune with the needs of the company. Ignitho as an enterprise innovation partner is a great choice for its innovation-friendly service model.

Check out this keynote video from InnoFrugal UK 2019. Our Co-founder & CEO, Joseph Olassa spoke on Innovation led Digital Application Development for Enterprises at the conference held at Cambridge University.

 

 

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Scott Nugent CCO Ignitho Technologies
Scott has over 25 years of experience in the information and technology business. He started as an analyst at TransUnion. After eight years of production roles, he moved into business development. Post TransUnion, he did sales stints at Experian Marketing Services and Entiera. He later joined Mindtree and was with them for eight years where he started by selling Data and Analytics Services to new clients, eventually selling Mindtree’s entire gamut of services. At Ignitho, as the Chief Commercial Officer (CCO), he heads the North America business and drives partnerships for this market.
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