What does it mean to be a Tech for Growth company?

Over the past decade, the role of technology in an organization has exponentially increased. The importance of seamless digital experiences that emulate the simplicity of physical interaction has spanned the enterprise. Companies that have acted quickly on this trend have enjoyed marked differentiation and valuation. The blueprint of this success is taking a technology first approach to transformation which provides a highly scalable foundation that can rapidly grow with the business. Think of a “start-up” model for fortune 500 companies where new ideas are introduced and accelerated to market through intuitive, nimble and swift technology solutions.

Consider the returns received by a large home-improvement retailer in a 5-year span after commencement of an enterprise-wide technology transformation, that not only was the first of its kind in the space but also established a sustainable internal engine of technology-driven growth

Companies across industries are raising their demands for digital products and services to serve their customers. This demand has suddenly thrust technology organizations that had been relentlessly focused on driving efficiency through centralization into an uncomfortable position of a top-line revenue driver. Simply put, most technology organizations have struggled to find success in this new role. Unable to develop successful partnerships with their enterprise technology organizations, businesses are seeking out these services elsewhere – often resulting in unsustainable costs, increased security exposure, and dilution of capabilities that provide a competitive advantage.

For those technology organizations that want to embrace the challenge of being the growth and innovation engines, we have outlined the key dimensions that need to be re-envisioned, becoming ‘Tech for Growth (TFG)’.

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What enables an organization to become a TFG company?

While critical success factors required to orchestrate a shift to Tech for Growth can vary across industry and company size, we’ve found the following dimensions to be common foundational elements that are closely linked.

Strategy

Traditionally, the hallmark of sound technology strategy has been anchored on business enablement and efficiency. While this remains an important aspect, the role of technology needs to shift from enabler to driver of top-line revenue. Business and technology leaders share responsibility to create a strategic vision that encourages cross-functional teaming to accelerate revenue realization, drive intuitive customer experiences, and even create new markets.

The outcome is a nimble and engaged technology organization that can dynamically adjust focus from execution to innovation in response to market and business needs.

Architecture

Effective technology architecture is a blueprint to execute on the technology strategy and a key determinant in a company’s ability to turn ideas into execution at scale. Common standards alongside an emphasis on modular solution design provide greater reusability, increased flexibility and less one-off solutions.

In most large organizations, there is a significant amount of technical debt that has accumulated over the years, making the shift to modern architecture arduous and expensive. Tech for Growth organizations remove architectural barriers to enable leaders to make decisions based on pressing business outcomes. Clear guiding principles are established to ensure adherence to the overall strategy. In the short term, teams can develop new solutions rapidly; in the long term the organization can shift incrementally to a modular and scalable architecture developed with business outcomes in mind.??

Engineering

Developer effort to create value is a critical denomination for growth organizations. In addition to building a modern architecture and actively managing technical debt, developer value can be maximized through the adoption of modern delivery methods such as DevOps.

While implementing DevOps is often considered a silver bullet, growth organizations make continuous investments into the critical enablers for its success. First, an automated CI/CD pipeline with robust telemetry is the backbone of DevOps. Second, developers need diversified skillsets to work end-to-end from development to deployment. Finally, a cloud-native implementation provides several pre-built tools that expedite implementation. As a result, not only do new features get developed faster, but quality and security become integrated into the process.

Talent

As industries have continued to be disrupted by technology, talent management has become an increasingly important capability for organizations to stay competitive and achieve growth. In recent years there has been an increasing focus on dynamic and interoperable talent.

According to PwC’s Executive Pulse Survey, 77% of executives believe the ability to hire and retain technology talent is the most critical driver to achieving growth and the principal means by which companies can execute growth-driven strategies. Developing a successful technology talent strategy is a challenge due to numerous factors such as scarce resources, continuous emergence of new technology skill requirements, competition, and growing salary expectations. ?

So how do you acquire and develop this critical talent if you are not a leading technology company with a brand that can easily attract the best of technical talent?

The answer is to take a methodical approach to talent strategy, that not only focuses on attracting top talent but building the apparatus to appropriately develop and retain valuable resources. Organizations must develop a strategic approach to address key questions across the talent lifecycle.

In the illustrative example below, we have explored how a specific technology-driven need may be a trigger for hiring, but a well-developed talent strategy maximizes the value of hired resources over the long haul

How to guide a Tech for Growth transformation?

Based on the responses from PWC's Technology Leader Insights Survey, 60% of executives see capitalizing on digital transformation initiatives as a very important part of their business. However, according to PWC's pulse survey 88% of executives struggle to capture value from their technology investments.?

Understanding drivers behind scattered tech and people strategies along with runaway delivery costs can be an ambiguous process. We've identified the following actions as being key steps to the successful shift to a Tech for Growth company.

Start small and be focused. Driving enterprise-wide change in a large organization is a complex effort and can lead to investments without commensurate benefit realization. As negative perception spreads, companies are likely to end up with a large amount of stranded investment cost as the transformation ramps down. Instead, start small by focusing on core differentiating business and technology capabilities. Sharpening the focus on key differentiators will help to define a business-led technology transformation with clearly understood outcomes and expected time frames. With demonstrated success, gathering buy-in, and creating a culture of change become significantly easier.

If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. ?Transformation is guided by a shared vision at the core of an organization and is driven by local decision-making being enabled at the edges. Clear goals and objectives are set at the top, and key metrics from each business unit are measured and tracked to ensure movement is aligned with the goal outcome. Identifying performance indicators and tracking them at the top and on the ground will ensure alignment to the overall vision. Success is not a straight path; deviations will occur, and teams need to be ready to adapt. Trusting each business unit to execute objectives set forth by management enables efficient decision-making and helps an organization stay quick on their feet. ?

Continuous improvement. Innovation is not a one-time change; it’s continuously measured, assessed, and improved over time. A culture of continuous improvement starts at the top with business and technology leaders holding each other accountable. The business needs to partner with technology as a driver, rather than an enabler, and give technology room to experiment to push innovation-led growth. This kind of autonomy will incentivize an organization to challenge the status-quo and advance new ways of thinking. Identifying quantifiable metrics during the transformation and communicating those metrics will reinforce change over time. Digital products that seamlessly integrate across business units will be created with a culture of technology-first innovation.

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