Connecting business and technology to achieve your goals

Even if you're not in the business of technology, technology is your business. 

In today’s rapidly evolving, digitally driven economy, all businesses are technology businesses —meaning that modernization is no longer just a luxury or competitive advantage, but a necessity and key driver of growth. 

As Ivey Business Journal puts it, creating “deep, meaningful and effective linkages between business and IT” can be “make or break” for your enterprise—the difference between success and failure, growth and stagnation, competing at the highest level or barely surviving.

Technology has changed everything about the way we do business, and especially in the past few years, accelerated at an exponential rate. It has not only shaped the way we work, interact with customers and all points on the supply chain, buy, sell, and market, collect, interpret and report data—it is the way we do all those things. The method, the tool, the channel, the interface.

Modernization—including all three main pillars—is critical for businesses today: 

• Modernization: rebuilding/replacing legacy systems with up-to-date, agile, scalable, and integrated technologies to enable data-led intelligence 
• Digital transformation: updating and evolving internal systems and interactions with customers and partners
• Innovation: adoption of intelligent, nimble, flexible technology and methodologies to leverage data, devices, software etc. to drive business

Through these processes, technology can help your business:

• Integrate and streamline systems
• Increase efficiency and productivity 
• Minimize errors
• Reduce costs 
• Optimize data collection and analysis, accessibility and usefulness, and keep all relevant information in one place
• Improve security 
• Create better internal and customer-facing communications 
• Better understand your customer
• Enhance customer experience
• Automate repetitive tasks
• Engage your workforce with more meaningful tasks, increasing employee satisfaction and workplace morale
• Drive growth and profitability 

But at its heart, modernization is not about the hottest new tech tools, it’s about true partnership—cohesiveness between business and technology strategies, the seamlessness of systems, and a unified purpose. The success of your technology is not measured simply by whether the tools themselves “work”, but by whether the technology you're using is producing demonstrable outcomes germane to the company’s fundamental mission. 

Your technology therefore will ideally evolve to fulfill the role of core enabler of your entire business model. Your business and your IT—the respective teams and their tools—must actively collaborate and integrate to create a structure and strategy that leverages technology to further your goals. 

In a sense, then, the IT department is antiquated by definition: to the extent that departmentalized means compartmentalized it’s no longer sustainable. As the Wall Street Journal has reported, “IT departments are for a bygone era and are ill-suited to the demands of a digital-first world.”

Confining IT to its historical position and purpose—support or solution-builder, essentially a supplier, a physically and philosophically back-office department that keeps the computers running—can hold your business in the past. And this outdated model has created a residual problem: a language barrier, even an adversarial relationship, that often exists between business and tech teams, born of having had different goals and functions.

The role of technology today is to drive innovation in a holistic way and ensure agility in the ever-evolving digital landscape; it’s increasingly customer-driven and must connect seamlessly throughout the workplace and at every touchpoint. There can be no silos—making decisions or creating processes in isolation. All departments need technology to work at the highest level. Together, technology systems and business operations must serve the unified purpose of forwarding the company’s mission and achieving its goals. 

It’s key, as Forbes points out, to create “a culture of modernization”—to “align employee values and behaviors with the realities of the modern digital age.” This means recognizing the essential interdependencies, organizing your entire workforce around a mission, and embedding the right technology throughout.

Good technology partners not only provide integrated, custom solutions—the most effective systems for your unique needs—but also help enterprise leaders sort through the hype, manage expectations for each new product, and make informed choices. The modern role of IT, both tools and teams, is not “silver bullet” but pivotal partner in a complete, dynamic ecosystem.  

At Lukasa, partnership is at the heart of our business. We work side by side with your existing team to gain a three-dimensional understanding of your company. We bring a veteran team of experts in both business and technology, and they know that real transformation is rooted in true partnership between the two. Looking at your processes and goals through a modern lens, we help you build and execute an innovative, integrated, custom plan to serve your objectives and maximize revenue, now and into the future.

About Lukasa - lukasa.com
Lukasa empowers small-to-medium-sized businesses by designing and implementing custom business and technology solutions that drive efficiency, productivity, and innovation, enabling them to stay ahead in today’s rapidly-changing competitive landscape.