As a Seattle IT Consultant I am called by new business startups, small businesses and businesses that have just seemed to stop growing.  Each business owner asking,

“I innovate! Why can’t I grow?”

If you’ve ever met someone who is a pure innovator, you might have noticed something about them.  I find that they have lots of ideas.  It’s the execution of those ideas that becomes the big problem.  What do I mean?  Imagine trying to build a building.  There is a very specific order to building a building.

For example: You would never wait to build the foundation until after the walls and roof was built.  Yet this is exactly what a pure innovator might do. It’s the classic example of the cart before the horse.

The innovator thinks that the cart before the horse is, “Just crazy enough that it might work!”  So building the roof before the foundation seems like a great idea too.

“Hey… everyone gets to work in the shade… am I right?” says the innovator.

So in the world of technology we have a standard order of operations.  Follow it in the wrong order and things don’t really well or expenses go up while everyone waits around.  In the business world there is also standard order of operations as well.  The problem I find with innovators is that they don’t follow them.  Nor do they expect others to follow them.  So when I walk into their networks they are having errors because they haven’t followed the proper order of operations.

For example:  As a business grows it follows a standard cycle of operations.  The first step is The Idea Stage.  The Idea stage is an exciting time for an innovator.  There is no reality to stop his dreaming.  The second step though is to Build the business systems.  This is where the innovator is often stopped in her tracks by reality.  The business systems as mention on this page are accounting, legal, marketing, sales, management, Human Resources and so on.  Before the business can duplicate itself, these systems must be in place first.  Without them, there really is no business to grow.  That is unless you are an innovator.

If you’ve ever met a builder personality, they love building these business systems.  The problem with an innovator is they get bored with the building part.  It becomes a tedious place for them.  So they try to make things interesting by adding another factory or something before all the business systems are in place.  The resulting problems become a nightmare for the technology group.

I wonder if I’m the only one that runs into these types of situations.  A business owner jumping into the next step before the last step was completed?  I suppose it keeps everyone on their toes, but I’ve had my fill of innovators lately

Recently I was meeting with a business owner and discussing customer relationship management (CRM) systems.  We were comparing Dynamics, Sales Force and Zoho from a business standpoint.  The three CRMs have three very different price point models, so how does one compare.  This is a pretty major choice and really will determine the technical architecture the organization will be able to utilize.  As a modern network architect, it’s essential to understand how the choice of a technology platform can affect the business.

We’ve talked about technology, so you’ve probably heard this before.  There are 5 stages a business goes through…

• Enrapture (Beginning entrepreneurs – where the business model is in the brain)
• Build (Where the entrepreneur creates a repeatable business model – Information is translated to workflows)
• Scale (where the model is duplicated or grown to support 10 to 100 times more capacity – No tribal knowledge)
• Efficiency (Where the weaknesses and risks found during scale are addressed.)
• Innovation (A strategic change in the whole business process)

The benefit of a CRM system is in collaboration created through strong workflow design.  The workflow is like a wizard that walks the user through the customer process.  In a sophisticated system there will be a workflow for the sales person, service desk, operations and even for the front desk people when they talk with customers and potential customers.  I don’t like Sales force because if you ever want to move from the system, you can’t take the workflows with you.  So many people casually decide on Sale Force because everyone seems to use it.  The ramifications are that you must build all your technology around Sales Force.  Today that might be ok, but what is the ramification in the future when the company is 10 times larger?

I like Dynamics (Windows Platform) and Zoho (Open Source Platform) as Cloud Architecture solutions, because they are compatible with so many other systems.  Microsoft Dynamics is compatible with everything Microsoft.  While Zoho has an even more comprehensive list of private and open source tools that it integrates with.   The systems then become very comprehensive so you don’t have to build the systems over and over again at every business stage.  The platform is robust enough that you can take the business to any level or in any direction.  Both Dynamics and Zoho are compatible with tools that will further enhance the scalability and efficiency of the organization.

There are over 50 CRM applications out there.  If we look back at the way industry grows we see a life cycle.  In the beginning of the life cycle of an industry there are many different options.  When we look back at the desktop computer.  In the beginning days of Apple they had to compete with IBM and HP, but they also had to compete with everybody that thought they could build a computer in their garage.  The industry matures and there are fewer and fewer competitors.  Whether the industry is computer hardware, software or even breakfast cereals (go back 100 years ago and read the history of Post and Kellogs.) three or four companies will dominate.  Therefore if we know that there are 50+ CRMs today, the final guess the Modern Network architecture expert needs to make is to guess which CRM will still be around 5 years from now.

So now the business has grown at an incredible rate.  Many business owners feel that at this stage all problems are good problems.  In a sense they are because the owner feels like the business has grown to a point that there is just too much work.  On the other hand this is where businesses topple over.  Imagine a tree with so much overgrowth in the branch that the trunk cracks in the wind.  Modern network architecture must design for this type of growth rate.  Many businesses wait until they have the problem, but if the problem isn’t planned for the business could come crashing down with a slight change in the economy. 

Imagine as a new entrepreneur you believe that the competition is missing one step in servicing their customers.  That step takes an extra 15 minutes that the competition doesn’t take.  With one customer and extra 15 minutes is no big deal.  With 10 customers that’s still only an extra couple hours.  As the business grows though, that fifteen minutes grows to ½ an FTE.  With a little more growth that 15 minutes grows to a full FTE.  Eventually 15 minutes for one customer can grow to a full department.  

Now that the original customer added 15 minutes here and 15 minutes there to the overall process.  Scaling the business amplifies all the inefficiencies in the small business process.  Adding FTE’s and departments adds indirect costs to the overall customer process.  Now that 15 minutes becomes a liability when competing.  The costs of new departments, leadership and supporting overhead cost resources.  Resources other competitors don’t have to spend.  What was a competitive advantage now becomes a competitive liability. 

In the efficiency stage the business takes these 15 minute processes reduces or eliminates costs associated with those 15 minutes.  Business process automation becomes the strategy.  If there is a competitive advantage in having that extra 15 minutes of work done for clients reducing the time spent on that 15 minutes, but providing the same level of service quality.  That’s the goal of business automation.  

There is often confusion over the difference between efficiency and innovation.  In the efficiency stage the goal is to find a way to do what the business is already doing with the same level of quality.  There is change involved, but not the kind of change involved in innovation.  In efficiency we identify the present process and make it better. 

As an example:

A Sales person makes a sale…

• The process is to create a checklist of tasks in a notepad. 
• Call the home office to check inventory
• Call the production manager to check the schedule
• Uses a calculator to add the costs and produce an estimate 
• Then gets and agreement from the customer
• Takes a check as down payment

Then sends a memo to the manufacturing to start the process for the customer 

In this scenario it’s easy to see where efficiencies might be gained in this process.  What worked when the owner wore all the hats not becomes cumbersome when working with a team.  

The answers don’t involve changing the process though.  Rather the answer is automating the process.  The automated process allows the sales person to quickly process the customer.  Instead of paper, process each request through a handheld computer on the customer site.  Instead of making calls manually the information is already provided online through the handheld computer.  The agreement starts the production process with a click on a computer. 

The computer still creates the checklist, checks inventory, checks production, calculates the estimate and schedules the process in about 5 minutes from the customer site.  The process does not change, Instead of the old way that required hours of manual calls and attempted contacts with each division.  

For the technology architect, efficiency systems involve understanding the process flow of the data.  Following that flow and looking for the bottlenecks in the process.  Most small businesses build systems that look like a series of bottles.  Each bottle fills the next bottle in the line.  Efficiency turns the whole process into a single bottle.  With a single bottle neck that controls the flow of information through the entire process.

In a strong IT operations model maintaining the integrity requires and understanding of change and stability.  Change is about instability.  High instability means more frequent IT failure.  Stability comes with the doing things the same way.  At the same time, business growth means change.  Because technology touches every aspect the business, as the business grows business growth destabilizes the technology.  In Modern network architecture, change needs to be assumed if only because as the business grows change must happen. 

When I am discussing technology with owners this understanding of change is often misunderstood.  Often technology is purchased with the assumption that it will last forever and has infinite capacity.  I’ve noticed when discussing this with owners that though there is usually a logical understanding of this concept.  Yet deep down there is not an emotional understanding of this concept.  Setting these types of emotional expectations is part of my job as a Seattle IT Consultant.

From the IT perspective, arguably there are 5 business stages.  I’ve borrowed these descriptions from business owners I’ve worked with. 

The first stage I like to call Enrapture.  In this stage a new business owner is excited about starting a business. 

I call the second stage Build.  In this stage the owner is creating a documentable and repeatable set of business processes. 

Scaling is what I call the third stage.  In this stage the owner duplicates the repeatable process created in the build stage.  The more times the process is repeated, the money the organization makes. 

As the business scales efficiencies assumed as a small business are lost as the business grows.  In addition new opportunities become available as the business grows.  Efficiency is the stage where the business changes to incorporate these opportunities of scale.

Innovation is the stage where the business re-invents itself.  More than just building efficiency, Innovation takes the business to the next level.  Innovation can represent the biggest change.

Each business stage means major changes for the business.  Usually at a minimum these changes are business process changes.  Business changes need to be supported by changes in technology.  In the IT Operations process, there is one force to maintain the integrity of the network.  At the same time there is also a force to migrate the network to change.  When these forces are in concert with the growth of the organization, the technology systems remain stable.  Too often the business systems change without considering the integrity of the technology supporting those systems.  In these situations, the technology systems become unstable.  With this instability, comes added expense for the business as the number of IT fires increase.

Modern network architecture is about building technical systems that grow with each business stage.  Often our job is complicated by anticipating new technology architectures like the cloud network architecture.  By integrating right technology for the right business stage we can provide our clients with a cost effective technology solution.