Betting Wisely: Refocus Your Tech Strategy with the Right Chips on the Table

I’m a mad keen scuba diver. One of the reasons I love diving so much is the complete distraction it offers from the hectic day to day of life. It affords me time to step back, disconnect and refocus.

Having recently spent 2 weeks away diving and disconnected, it truly hit me when I returned just how much noise and clamour there is around AI currently. Not just in financial services but the world in general. Even for those of us whose day to day is technology this has become the biggest peak of inflated expectations I think any of us have seen.

It’s therefore not hard to see how it could be overwhelming for anyone thinking about technology within their business at the moment.

That’s why it’s important to take a step back from the noise.

Whilst not everyone has the opportunity to plunge into the deep blue sea, I would encourage everyone to pause and refocus on what’s important in their business.

There is the adage that we only have limited resources in our life to spend on what’s important; time and money being the obvious resources.

We’re encouraged to think about these limited resources as casino chips. We have a limited number and should think carefully about how we spend those precious chips on what’s most important to us. More often than not we waste our chips on the unimportant.

So how do we maximise the return on our chips when it comes to technology?

To answer this question, with all the noise around fintech right now, it is vital to step back and refocus (go for a dive if you can!). Focus on what you and your business are trying to achieve. Clearly understand your business vision and goals; your ‘Why’. By doing so you can filter some of the noise and concentrate on the right solutions to meet your goals. It’s sometimes difficult to ‘mark your own homework’, so collaborating with an objective 3rd party expert like Finovation Consulting can often be invaluable at this point.

At Finovation we think about where to place chips in roughly 6 quadrants of a board.

Whilst a number of these are interlinked, they often require different tool sets and ways of thinking to achieve, which makes it important to place your chips in the right place to achieve your aims.

As with any casino there are risks and rewards. You can spend more chips on one area at the expense of another, or you may choose to spread your bets but not gain the maximum return.

For example, improving your client onboarding experience may require more work in the back office. The client sees the graceful swan, not the mad paddling underneath. Or you may be happy with your existing, slightly disjointed client experience in a trade-off for improving back office efficiencies to enable scalability.

The choice is yours. But it has to be a choice without distractions. This is why understanding your ‘Why’ is vital. ??

So, whilst I can help you learn to scuba dive to gain a fresh perspective, a more immediate solution is to allow Finovation to help you step back, focus and understand what is important in your business. We can then help filter out the noise and choose the right solutions.

So, where are you going to place your chips?