Appleton Greene & Co – Technology Innovation
Service objectives
Appleton Greene & Co The following list represents the Key Service Objectives (KSO) for the Appleton Greene & Co Technology Innovation service.
Objective Strategy
Appleton Greene & Co The five service objectives of the Technology Innovation service create a logical progression for this service, taken in full scope together, or when a particular situation warrants, the five service objectives emphasized or executed as constituent parts. The service objectives can be purchased as a complete process. They can be treated as stand-alone objectives/activities for select targeted consulting engagements. Or, they can be used together, but weighted differently based upon the client’s needs. The main theme of this service objective is vision. The Technology Strategy service objective focuses upon assisting client organizations in taking a top-level view of their technology integration needs. Technology strategies are an integrated part of an organizations’ broader strategic objectives. Technology strategies and objectives cannot be taken out of the context of an organization’s goals, objectives, strategies, and plans. Some niche technology firms view this task very narrowly. This service objective does not begin with selecting a technology architecture, but can end with one once organizational strategies and technology strategies are aligned. This service objective is executed by collaborating with senior executives, leaders, and members of the client organization’s strategy team, whether one is formally designated or informally active. Through a process of reviewing available new technology/new strategy planning documents and individual and small group interview sessions, the broad focus for the Technology Innovation under consideration is examined and explored. This aligns with the information gathering phase at the start of any new consulting engagement and as outlined in the Service Methodology. The point is to facilitate or perform (depending upon internal support available to the consulting engagement) the articulation of a shared vision for strategic alignment between top-level goals and objectives for the organization and the opportunities and threats from corresponding technology acquisition, retirement, or integration strategy(ies), which may be considered. Appleton Greene & Co
Assessing Alternatives
Appleton Greene & Co The five service objectives of the Technology Innovation service create a logical progression for this service, taken in full scope together, or when a particular situation warrants, the five service objectives emphasized or executed as constituent parts. The service objectives can be purchased as a complete process. They can be treated as stand-alone objectives/activities for select targeted consulting engagements. Or, they can be used together, but weighted differently based upon the client’s needs. The main theme of this service objective is research, articulating opportunities, and winnowing down opportunities to a small family possibilities. The Assessing Alternatives service objective is oriented on extending the Objective Strategy analysis and considering feasible courses of action based upon resources constraints, technology maturity constraints, cultural acceptance and technology adoption constraints, and organizational risk acceptance/avoidance constraints. The outcome of this objective are broad, clear alternatives that are fundamentally different ways to develop and articulate the Technology Innovation strategy in terms of strategy implementation choices. This service objective is executed by considering all technology insertion/technology adoption proposals that achieve the planned Technology Innovation strategy articulated in the prior objective. The process is similar to the prior step, however, the information gathering activity (reading, interviewing, drafting alternatives for analytical drill down, etc.) shifts the focus from prior internal planning and discussion documents and meetings to researching available off-the-shelf technologies or soon-to-be-available new technologies. The focus of external research is driven largely by existing standards and technologies the organization imposes on itself, and a clear understanding of the organizations’ risk avoidance/risk acceptance profile. Finally, depending upon the client organization’s tolerance for risk or their culture/plan to be an industry leader, the analysis alternatives can be broad and sweeping or more narrowly constrained. However, it is usually always a good exercise to consider the analysis of alternatives both unbounded by constraints—to let client managers and executives get a feel for the start of the art of the possible or near possible—and then to begin to bound the alternatives by client preferred or defined criteria, grouped around common bins such as: resource-constrained, possibility-constrained, regulatory-constrained, market dynamics-constrained, technology maturation-constrained, and risk-constrained. Appleton Greene & Co
Technology Valuation
Appleton Greene & Co The five service objectives of the Technology Innovation service create a logical progression for this service, taken in full scope together, or when a particular situation warrants, the five service objectives emphasized or executed as constituent parts. The service objectives can be purchased as a complete process. They can be treated as stand-alone objectives/activities for select targeted consulting engagements. Or, they can be used together, but weighted differently based upon the client’s needs. The main theme of this service objective is assessment and analysis. The Technology Value service objective focuses upon assisting or leading client organizations in performing strategic technology assessments, considering the “as is” state and one or more alternative future “to be” states. This service objective bridges the gap from the Objective Strategy (a high-level “what” and “why’ of implementing Technology Innovation) combined with the Assessment of Alternatives (“what all can/should we do”?)—and getting to valuing and fitting the “what” or “which” into a “how” or “how much”? Further, this service objective continues the analytical assessments begun in the prior objective and continuing the winnowing and clarifying process by evaluating the remaining alternatives using industry and firm-appropriate appropriate scoring criteria. This service objective is executed by using the client’s risk acceptance/avoidance filter and then taking a custom balanced score card approach to the alternatives being evaluated, comparing them to one another. The Technology Valuation service objective, in the context of a Technology Innovation project, must necessarily consider a full scope of valuation and evaluation criteria, again, within the broader strategic context of what the client organization aims to accomplish. This may seem pedantic to write it, but the old engineering aphorism, “tell me how you’ll measure me and I’ll tell you I’ll perform,” applies to valuing and assessing the business value of a new technology or a new technology product line. Targeted criteria—focused on evaluating the technology(ies) in question—against the original strategic objectives is critical to success. Appleton Greene & Co
Technology Integration
Appleton Greene & Co The five service objectives of the Technology Innovation service create a logical progression for this service, taken in full scope together, or when a particular situation warrants, the five service objectives emphasized or executed as constituent parts. The service objectives can be purchased as a complete process. They can be treated as stand-alone objectives/activities for select targeted consulting engagements. Or, they can be used together, but weighted differently based upon the client’s needs. The main theme of this service objective is synchronization with other activities and synchronization of the technology within the culture and business transformation requirements. The Technology Integration service objective continues the Technology Innovation pursuit from strategy to implementation, flowing from the functional and economic analysis of alternatives, which lead to a winnowing of the alternatives, and ultimately a selection of the technology strategy and its associated technology plan of action for implementation. This service objective is the implementation planning and execution step. This service objective ensures the plan for the new technology adoption is both thoughtfully planned and executed. This service objective is executed by linking the analytical and planning flow from the preceding three service objectives, and shifting the focus from planning to execution. Technology integration is the process of linking the planned Technology Innovation with the requirements of integration environment. In popular and academic literature, there are several versions of the Technology Integration Matrix, the core of each are up to five dimensions of engagement and five dimensions of integration (e.g., Entry, Adoption, Adaption, Infusion, and Transformation). Thus, the Technology Integration service objective ensures the selected technology path fits within the needs and contexts of the organization. This is not trivial. In management science, there is growing consensus that the majority of process improvement change projects which fail, fail to achieve some or all of their objectives because the workforce resists the change. And, they resist the change because the fear the uncertainty of not knowing what the change means, and they resent the uncertainty about how it will work. Technology Integration plans and execution are hard; they must be well thought out, both technically and managerially. Appleton Greene & Co
Managing Technology
Appleton Greene & Co The five service objectives of the Technology Innovation service create a logical progression for this service, taken in full scope together, or when a particular situation warrants, the five service objectives emphasized or executed as constituent parts. The service objectives can be purchased as a complete process. They can be treated as stand-alone objectives/activities for select targeted consulting engagements. Or, they can be used together, but weighted differently based upon the client’s needs. The main theme of this service objective is metrics, performance, and portfolio technology management. The Technology Management service objective is the part of the process that turns implementing a new strategy into sustained operational use. It is about planning for and executing the return to (new) steady state operations with the new Technology Innovation initiatives undertaken. Technology Management includes the full range of plans for managing and monitoring the effectiveness and efficiencies planned for are achieved. The old management science aphorism of not being able to manage what you do not monitor comes to mind. Note, some authors define technology management as the full lifecycle scope of evaluating current technology, envisioning new technology projects, forecasting technology trends, selecting targeted technologies for implementation, implementing their insertion into the business model, and then monitoring and managing both the current and new technologies as a portfolio of technologies supporting organizational operations. This service objective is executed by management of implemented new technology projects. The broader view of Technology Management is a useful view in some contexts; however, for this Technology Innovation consulting service, the early lifecycle activities just described are executed separately as the first four service objectives in the consulting service. Thus, in this context, Technology Management takes a more narrowly focused view on the backend of the Technology Innovation lifecycle, and pertains more specifically to managing and monitoring both the existing and newly integrated technologies into one bundled portfolio. Appleton Greene & Co
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