No needle-moving tech initiative should take more than 5 months!

I’m famous for saying “No needle-moving tech initiative should take more than 5 months”. And here’s why.?

A friend who's an executive at an Entertainment giant recently shared a cautionary tale with me about their tech initiative "MVP" disaster. They'd partnered with a well-known software company from New York.

Their mission was to develop a new technology from the ground up for the company’s global marketing department. Surprisingly, this 5,000-strong department was still reliant on Google Sheets for work management (I know, right?).

It was supposed to be a huge win.?

The software company team got to work. With their assumed authority they were constantly pushing to increase the scope. Since the entertainment company went all-in with the new initiative, the executives couldn't say "No" feeling held hostage.

A year later, the team launched the "overcooked MVP" to the executives and a test group of 45 UK employees. Only two adopted it, while the rest clung to their Google Sheets.?The negative feedback followed in a form of 12-page Word doc.

Another four months were spent in an attempt to find the needle-moving "magic", but a subsequent rollout continued to yield disappointing results.

After having sunk nearly $10M and almost two years into development, the entertainment company decided to switch vendors on the project.

Right around that time my executive friend reached out and asked if Techery had some bandwidth to help them save the day. We agreed to help, and started with a quick 2-week audit. In our numerous interviews with the end-users (something the other company didn't even bother doing) and after analyzing key data points, we managed to find the Needle-Moving opportunity. We established that the company had an upwards of $7M of unrealized revenue from the lack of predictive analytics the marketers could use to spin up campaigns 3 times quicker. Once this was revealed there was a unanimous support of the idea. We got the green light right at the meeting. We worked closely with the end-users to identify the essential campaign analytics required to move the needle. The team got to work. Every 2 weeks we were making interactive feature releases to keep everyone in the loop and to shorten feedback loop leaving no room for surprises.

4 months in, the marketers started using the first version of the new predictive analytics system. The first quarter following, the company made an extra $3.7M in previously unrealized revenue.

At our year-end corporate bash, amidst the clinks of glasses and echoes of laughter, my executive friend had a reflective look in his eyes. He posed a question, "What's your biggest takeaway this year?"?

And I answered back: "No needle-moving tech initiative should take more than 5 months!"

He nearly spat out his wine and joined me in a hearty laugh. From that moment, the phrase became legendary within our circles.

After implementing this 'start-up mentality' in over 30 enterprises, I'm convinced that there's almost always a chance to leverage a frugal tech initiative to generate millions in savings and profits.

The real challenge isn't just having expert resources; it's about those experts knowing how to address a business issue without turning it into an 18-month software endeavor.

The true art lies in pinpointing the quickest, most reliable route to a win within a 5-month timeframe.