A friend of mine sent me the Executive Book Summary of Jim Collins book “Good to Great”. One area of the summary discusses “technology is an accelerator”. Collins explains that “good-to-great companies do not jump on technological bandwagons or chase after fads. They determine what technology makes the most sense for them, then pioneer its application.”

Tight rolled pants was a fad we all followed.

Define Your Requirements
When making a technology decision you must first determine your business requirements. When we engage into an application development project our first group of deliverables consists of a functional requirements document. This document outlines the functional requirements necessary to the business processes. When this is done first then it makes decisions and budgets much more accurate and profitable. But typically we see companies following “fads and bandwagons” of new and popular technology. They use these technology fads because their competition is or they were sold incorrectly. As a result poor decisions result in lost profits. But when you instead become a pioneer in the application you are accelerating your momentum for for success. You are defining the requirements and the direction for your business.

Don’t Overreact to New Technology
Collins states that “leaders of good-to-great companies respond with thoughtfulness and creativity, driven by a compulsion to turn unrealized potential into results. They do not take reactionary measures, defining strategy in response to what others are doing. They act in terms of what they want to create, and how to improve their companies, relative to an absolute standard of excellence“. Don’t let the technology fads overwhelm you. Instead, know the direction of your business and the technology can be created to enhance that. A client of ours shopped for ERP software packages to run their business. Because of the complexity of their business and because they were first to market with a product they determined to custom build the application based on their specific business requirements. As a result, not only are they a leader in the market because of their product but their competitive advantage has become their application and how their business runs on it. Now, their competition is coming to them requesting their software to be implemented into their business. They have become the pioneer and leader because they did not follow a fad or jump on certain bandwagons. They are growing because they know the direction their business needs to take and they have defined the application to support it.

Why Are You Joining the Social Media Fad?
In another document supplied to me called “How Clients Buy” published by RainToday.com it indicates that social media/online communities are near the bottom of the list of what influences companies to buy professional services. I agree and disagree with this statement. I disagree with it because social media/online communities help create popularity which generates brand awareness and familiarity, which happens to be the most popular way clients buy professional services. So social media/online communities can help get your foot in the door but it can’t close the deal which why I agree with the statement. Don’t hide behind social media/online communities. Not all of your buyers on there or even worse the wrong buyers are there.
Have a specific strategy with measurables. We use SalesForce to measure all of our activity, including that on social media sites. So I know exactly how profitable our business is from online activity as well as how much time we should be spending in those communities or what online social activity I need to improve.