Situation: A company has had early success with a promising new technology that compliments the company’s strategic direction. Their objective is to become one of the top suppliers and servicers of this technology in their service area. How do you take advantage of a new technology?

Advice from the CEOs:

• Leverage the company’s strengths to create an early advantage in this technology.
  • Create a low-cost delivery system to take advantage of opportunities available through this technology initially at a lower margin, then offer enhancements to build margin to company norms.
  • Investigate other markets and applications where this low-cost delivery system can generate you new opportunities.
• It is early to assess whether the new technology will become dominant, or just the latest fad. It has been on the market for less than two years and is just taking off.
  • Take the next few months to dig into what is happening within vendors of the technology, and how they are perceived by their client companies.
  • Talk to CIOs about their perceptions of the technology based on the last few quarters of experience – quality of implementation, quality of service. Other providers add a layer to the cost – is the service worth the cost or do client companies save over time through overhead reduction?
  • Talk to other vendors from other market areas – learn from their experience selling and working with the technology.
  • How do the other vendors make money? Are costs to their corporate clients offset by savings implementing the technology? What margins are the others enjoying and does this come from the initial technology, from add-on services, or complimentary sales. What is the perception of the sustainability of this technology both within the providers and to the CIOs? What about the technology really irks corporate clients? Where is the soft underbelly of this technology? Research may assist in making future decisions on how to approach the technology and clients.

[like]