All companies are now technology companies - right? Hmmm....

Even though it's an old cliché that all companies are now becoming technology companies, it doesn't stop the phrase being rolled out on a regular basis. But I've started to see it be used to justify some of the wrong decisions and it got me thinking and asking some questions such as:

Is it really true? - To a certain extent it is true for all companies. What I mean by that is technology is becoming a differentiator again. It has the ability to provide competitive advantage when looking at the kind of company you want to be, the kind of service you want to provide to your customers, the types of insights that will increase revenues and deliver higher quality customer experience resulting in higher margins.

So what kind of tech company? - Well, what's the future direction of your market? Will business be won and lost through improved customer experience? Or will first mover advantage into new sales channels like the Metaverse drive growth? Is your business model going to change? I remember talking about "Servitisation" in the manufacturing industry 15 years ago but maybe the thinking was ahead of the technology, has it now caught up? Or is data the future for your industry? Owning the data and converting it to insight could be the basis for future success? Can you monetize what is currently stored in your applications?

But do companies need to be experts in all technologies? - This is where I see some of these "wrong decisions" being made, in my opinion. Many organizations are adopting new technologies - AI, IoT, all the usual, even newer versions of old technology like S/4HANA, Oracle Cloud products, etc. and they assume that to be a technology company you need to have skills in all technologies - let's recreate the old, so to speak. The thing is that IT is getting more and more complex and, in the same way that technologies evolve and improve, so do the ways that technology is consumed, implemented, supported and exploited and so being a technology company means understanding that is best practice around the ways of working and tooling for Enterprise IT management.

So, to be a technology company, do I need to need to know everything about all the technologies I use - I think the answer is NO. To be a technology company, I need clarity on what's going to help me to deliver on my future strategy, focus on the value adding parts and then collaborate with partners and consume services where I can for efficiency and reduced cost across the whole portfolio.