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| Roman Roads |
The concept of speed as an advantage is not new. Over the course of 700 years, the Romans built and maintained a system of roads extending over 55,000 miles. They built it to enable speedy communications and the quick movement of troops and supplies across the vast expanse of their global empire.
Today, our perception of time and speed is being shaped and confused by technologies. A person might say they live five minutes from town, but is that calculated by walking, riding a bike or driving a car. In the roman era, their military calculations were determined by a standard measurement based on how far and fast a soldier could walk on a stone road carrying their equipment. It was about 20 miles per day.
Today, digital technologies compress our perception of time, speed and space while expanding our expectations of what can be accomplished in a given time period. We expect to complete the equivalent of one hour of shopping in a supermarket in five minutes online. These changes significantly impact the way businesses must operate in a digital era to compete and remain relevant.
In a shareholder letter from a few years ago, Jeff Bezos identified one of Amazon's key competitive advantages as high-speed decision-making.
In one research project I worked on, many of the participants were from technology and consulting firms. As a group they identified the pursuit of speed as a key motivation for digital transformation. In particular, those surveyed identified the following areas of need:
• Speed developing - new products and services to meet customer demands
• Speed going to market (GTM) - with new products and services
• Speed responding - to changing market conditions and customer preferences
• Speed adopting and implementing - new innovations and technologies
When asked about the biggest challenges their customers were facing with digital transformation, respondents in another survey answered using all kinds of references to speed (or lack of speed) issues: legacy systems (are too slow), iterative approaches (are too slow), technologies are evolving too fast to react (and responses are too slow), business strategy alignment (was too slow). The consensus among the technology leaders surveyed, however, was that the biggest mistake leaders make - was moving too slow.
We learned four key points:
1. Technology Performance
Most executives felt their IT infrastructures were a disadvantage to their business. The limitations of their IT infrastructure limited the speed they could respond to changing conditions. They saw their internal systems as a hindrance not a help.
We also found a series of "Legacy Rules" inside the data:
- The longer an organization is in business, the more complex the technology infrastructure becomes, and the more difficult it is to change. They lose agility and speed the longer they are in business.
- These limitations prevent businesses from changing at the speeds required to remain relevant.
- Limitations often impact a business' options and their potential strategies.
- The size of a company’s IT challenge is directly proportional to the number of legacy and custom (non-standard) solutions they use.
2. Organizational Agility
The speed at which an organization can change directions - its agility - is critical to success in a fast changing digital world. The lack of organizational agility has real world consequences. “We missed [revenue] opportunities,” said one of the participants.
3. Leadership Decision-Making
It takes real-time speed to support real-time interactions with real-time digital customers. Decision making must be automated to support these digital speeds and environments.
4. Customer Alignment
Fast-changing customer behaviors were identified as a top motivation for digital transformation.
Consumers today are changing their habits and behaviors at an extraordinary rate. An executive we interviewed said, “Our customers’ expectations are always three or four steps beyond us...we are always behind.”
Businesses today must measure and track the speed and pace of changing consumer preferences and behaviors, and align resources and priorities to ensure they are transforming, if not at the same pace, at least at a pace ahead of their competition.
Kevin Benedict
Partner | Futurist at TCS
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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
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