How do you weigh new tech risks in business?

Simply shifting a poor-performing process onto a new platform will not improve the process. Improving processes and outcomes should be a core part of planning before considering migration to new technologies.

It’s rarely the tech that is the problem…vendor management and measurement that are the problem. I pay careful attention to the financials AND the tech. Don’t fall in love with the tech, an RFI or RFP/purchase order gets you what you want.

Market landscaping and competitive analysis can be conducted within your team or with open innovation specialists. The aim is to comprehend what is already available in the market, the pros and cons of existing technologies, emerging technologies, regulatory frameworks, and potential roadblocks. This information can be gathered by reading reports, consulting subject matter or industry experts, etc. This comprehensive approach aids in weighing new tech risks effectively within the business.

Due diligence on the vendor is a supply-chain role in large enterprises. Lacking a supply-chain infrastructure SMB’s must go to pains to cross every “T” and dot every “I”. Leave no stone unturned.

I recommend getting out into the vendor “fashion shows” at other venues to find out how their employees speak about their company. A hot company has proud and eager people..not play-actors. Cost-vs-benefits analysis should leap out at you during your reasearch phase.

As someone providing technologies to our customers, Its always critical that our customers understand the limitations of technologies. Certain tech can only be beneficial for certain use-cases, and if not used correctly could even lead to risks. Specially when onboarding a new customer its important that we convey the risks and ask our customers to own those risks.

Risks can be mitigated so long as the risks are fully known. Inevitably exceptions pop-up. Own the risks - take charge and eliminate them. This can be accomplished via negotiations, and “teeth in the purchase order errata. Regulatory and statutory constraints should be known before this point.

In my experience, a very effective way to mitigate new tech risk is isolating it first, I mean, build a "Capsule" (this can be a product, a department, or an obsolete solution to a problem where this new technology can be applied) and use this new tech to solve the problem inside that capsule, then invite external actors to the capsule, gradually... you can start with POCs and then, MVPs but still the concept of isolation is the very valuable key to understand and analyze risk exposure and then risk mitigation.

Insure you negotiate vendor baby-sits their product until you are satisfied; anything less is setting your own team up for failure. If you know the risks, push them back onto the vendor. Do not let vendors dictate your strategy - especially big-vendors, they’ll bankrupt an SMB if they want to. This gets back to vendor and acquisition management.

There are no silver bullets in technology. New technology needs to be evaluated and factored into existing processes and procedures so they can be effectively implemented. Also, as we know, there will always be an app for that. The proliferation of SaaS apps in use across companies is exploding. This introduces challenges. Is that data protected? Is it available in the event of individual deletion or cyberthreat? It’s important to know what your threat landscape is, what data is protected and unprotected and what you have in place to ensure the technology you are using and the data you are creating is available and easily ready for recovery in the event of any outage. Don't wait until you check your Terms of Service to realize that.

Everyone wants the new tech to be validated by market first before they try, but if everyone thought exactly like that no one in Market would validate the tech. Some organizations have to become the lead adopters of the tech, and the rest of the market will follow. Be the lead adopter, benefits of adopting early outweigh the risks of failure, specially if you manage risks properly with PoCs and Portotyping.

In my view, it comes down to how easily the action can be reversed. Tools that require big integration with your existing workflow and data sources are the ones where we should go through extensive due diligence before making the decision. For tools that are easy to set up, try, use, and cancel. We should move quickly to try it out instead of overspending time on research and comparison.