Investing in Tech: Early adopter or wait and see...

Deciding to whether to invest in technology for your business can present many challenges, there are many factors to consider and plenty of questions to ask before committing to anything. No one has the ability to see the future, so whenever you're considering whether to implement a new solution or not, there are risks. Risks attached to saying yes, but also risks attached to saying no.

When the technology is brand new and relatively untested or unproven, the risk may be increased, but with new tech the potential benefits increase as well. The reason the benefits increase is because new tech often allows you to do things differently to your competition, thus providing an opportunity to gain a competitive advantage, often before anyone outside your business knows what you're doing differently.

For example, taking a manual process and automating it should lead to an increase in efficiency. If you're operating more efficiently than your nearest rivals, that gives you an advantage over them. Even if they then decide to implement the same solution, they're doing so to keep up with you, so might gain parity but no real advantage.

Being obsessed with what your competitors are doing is often counterproductive, by all means keep an eye on them, but don't allow yourself to be influenced by every move they make. Your focus should primarily be on your own business and what's best for it.

There's no denying that there are benefits to waiting to see how a new tech product performs before committing to investing in it yourself. If the evidence suggests it's likely to be a bad investment, you've saved yourself time and money, if evidence suggests there are teething issues with the software, you can wait until those issues have been resolved before reconsidering. Ultimately most people would probably say there are less risks to waiting and seeing how others get on with a new platform before deciding to implement it yourself, but as Del Boy once said...

"Come on Rodney, this is our big chance. He who dares wins! This time next year, we could be billionaires!"

The reality is, with the vast majority of new tech products out there it's rare that any provider is going to ask you to pay a huge sum without at least giving you the opportunity to test and gain confidence in it first. However, tech costs money and there's a likelihood that the provider of that product has already invested a substantial amount in developing it, ready for market, so don't underestimate that.

As a business that provides tech solutions for logistics companies, I speak from experience when I say most people fall into the 'lets wait and see' category, and for good reason. That said, what I'm seeing in the industry at the moment is certain companies investing in the future by investing in new technology, and they are benefitting.

Doing things the same as you've always done them usually results in things staying exactly the same, or getting worse as a result of others around you changing their approach and gaining an advantage. In order to grow any business, you have to be willing to take risks and try things that you've not tried before. That might be adapting existing processes and trying to do them better, it might be investing in new people, products or services, but ultimately, if you want results to change, you have to change the way you play the game.

Allowing others in your industry to be early adopters of new tech products could be deemed sensible, but by doing that you also accept that they will gain a competitive advantage over you should the product deliver the proposed benefits.

At Cargo-Select we are working with early adopters at the moment and have tried to limit the barriers for those people in order to get them using our platform. Understanding how important those early adopters are to our business also results in an increased willingness to 'give back' and reward those companies for the faith they showed in us and our product whilst in its infancy, another potential benefit of being an early adopter.

If you're interested in speaking to us about the benefits of becoming an early adopter, let me know, and whilst I can't promise we can make you billionaires by this time next year, there's a good chance that being more daring than your competitors should result in a few extra ￡'s on to your bottom line!

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