Is Tech a business strategy?

At a recent conference I was slightly shocked when asked my thoughts on whether technology was a business strategy. Having seen technology being implemented in businesses over the past decade, intuitively it felt as though all businesses need a tech strategy to remain competitive, but on reflection, is tech a strategy or a culture shift?

Based on my experience as a business leader, I would argue that effectively incorporating tech into business decision making is a culture shift, akin to adopting Kaizen as a business philosophy for the following reasons:

1.???? I have yet to see a single type of technology that can satisfy all the needs of even a reasonably sized business. Technology packages need to be connected (speak to each other) to provide the correct output for decision making across the business.

2.???? Technology needs to live across the organisation, not just in the IT department to be most impactful for accessing the data lake that businesses develop.

3.???? Technology should be used to facilitate data driven decision making across the business, the ultimate goal being to make decisions using real-time data.

4.???? I discovered in some industries that real-time data remains an evasive enigma despite the technology we have available. This must be really challenging, given the pace at which the world changes.

5.???? Using technology as an enabler to make decisions needs to be embraced at the top decision-making levels. Without a conscious drive from top management, technology will be implemented in silos, as is the case in many businesses.

6.???? Technology needs to be applied in an impactful way to help people do their jobs. The age-old culture shift requirement from people that will engage with a system daily of, "what's in it for me" needs to be satisfied to get traction across the business.

7.???? The business goal is decision making based on accurate data. Technology is used to collate and present the data, the same way a language is used to communicate data and ideas.

8.???? Applying technology in a business is not about implementing the latest cutting-edge solutions, it is about identifying and linking technologies appropriately for the decision making required to deliver on the strategic goals; this speaks directly to Return on Investment decisions.

In my view, so long as technology is seen as a strategy rather than a way of doing business, we will fail to unlock the true competitive advantage potential that technology solutions can provide, and technology will remain in the domain of the IT department.