Understanding Technology Perspective for Businesses & Startups

Let's begin with the definition of a Business and a Startup.

Business is that a company or an organization or an individual who is producing goods & services which are being consumed by consumers. The consumers can be a business or an individual and then comes the definition of B2B, B2C, and the other jargon.

Startup is essentially a project initiated by an entrepreneur that seeks to effectively develop the idea in their mind into a product with a scalable business model. The whole idea is to grow exponentially. And undoubtedly, technology plays a major role in doing the same as it seeks to disrupt the market.

Interestingly, the terms "startup" and "business" can be used interchangeably as a traditional business can operate with a startup mindset and a supposed startup can be run like an old school bureaucratic organization.

What exactly does technology mean in a business/startup?

When we speak about Technology in a business or a startup, it refers to Digital Media which are encoded in a machine-readable format that can be created, viewed distributed, modified, and preserved on Digital Electronic devices. (Source Wikipedia)

Basically, the usage of smart connected devices, be it mobile phones, computers, smartwatches and so on, are parts of this networked life.

In general, technology is being used to address the challenges of cost, mobility & efficiency. Yogesh

Technology acts as an enabler to:

• Streamline processes & make them uniform

• Monitor progress of ongoing projects

• Optimize operations

• Analyze the demand, supply & sales cycles

• Understand the customer success metrics

• Reach out to the right audience globally

• Analyze the business cycle to forecast demand and accordingly plan the operations

Bridging the gap between Technology and the team

In any business, there are three specific distinctions to the core team:

1. the Business Guy

2. the Technology Guy

3. the Designer

The Business guy is the one who is excited about the fact that a genuine challenge has been identified and it will be great to disrupt the game.

The Technology guy is the one who is excited about the fact that they will be getting to play around with the technology to solve the business challenge.

The Designer works with a Business guy and the Techie to get the idea to life by understanding the thought process of customer and the end-user throughout this journey of problem-solving. This expertise requires creativity & logic. 

How does Technology give life to ideas?

The whole idea of the problem-solving process is that,

"There has to be paying customers for the product which is the result of the idea and the vision."

There is a clear cut understanding in the core team or the mind of an entrepreneur of how the business is able to grow.

And, to have that clear cut understanding there has to be a detailed discussion on what will be the cost estimates on the basis of time & material, onboarding time and what environment it will be impacting.

To execute this whole idea there comes a stage where MVP comes into play.

MVP means Minimum Viable Product, where the product has just enough features to satisfy early customers and provide feedback for future product development.

What does it take to leverage Technology?

Whenever a Technology Partner or a CTO or a Techie comes on board, the inclination remains towards working with "new cutting edge technology". But, to actually develop a product, the one thing which is needed the most is:

"An understanding of the entire Technology ecosystem"

That ecosystem includes the following points to be emphasized on:

• The framework which will be used should be open source or proprietary technology. For example, JavaScript is an open-source but IBM Stack has a huge licensing cost.

• The product will have to be integrated with third-party software and the methods for the incurring cost must be accounted for beforehand.

• The proper system of evaluation to measure the time frame in terms of milestones, goals and the audience impacted, must be taken care of.

• Once the technology stack is decided, the possibility of finding a developer with the required skill set at the particular compensation must be calculated.

• There has to be clarity in terms of the vision of the product with its roadmap to check the progress. This is where project management software such as JIRA is used.

There is a cost involved in terms of money and resources and their interdependencies to get the MVP out. Once the MVP is successful, a similar exercise is needed to be done to work on the product.

The business guy needs to thoroughly understand the business and the prevailing environment in terms of compliance, data security, privacy, legal challenges and so on.

Further, this helps in understanding the data storage, application's premises from the "design perspective".

In this whole process, technology takes its own sweet time to stabilize and integrate the existing platforms so as to make sure that the whole transition is smooth.  

In the end, it boils down to idea, design & execution and the entities of the core team, business guy, designer & techie have to work in sync to understand each other's perspective, constraints, market dynamics, and business reality. This coordination is the only thing that helps the entrepreneur to effectively position the enterprise in the ocean of opportunities to make it the next big thing.

What else do you think is needed to make the best out of the technology in a startup or a business?