Understanding the solution cycle and preparing to manage it proactively is critical to implementing successful online initiatives. Let’s explore what this concept I’m labeling the “solution cycle” is and you’ll see the common sense to this approach, in how it can work to drive innovation, as well as provide competitive advantage.
As soon as a company implements an online initiative, usually an external website to start, they enter the solution cycle. Each solution is the beginning of the next problem. The website that creates an online presence for your company and expands your audience for your marketing messaging now needs to be integrated to a back-end system. Or perhaps your sales force is complaining because they see the new site but the tools they need aren’t available to them because the site has no permissions structure to allow them access to confidential information. These kinds of problems can either cause your business innovation to grind to a halt, or they can feed the ongoing development of your vision.
Companies manage this solution cycle in one of three ways:
- Avoid – ignore the growing problems until you can’t anymore, then drop other projects and react, defensively and tactically.
- Spend –throw money at the latest problem, contributing to the large service revenues that many Internet technology providers reap
- Anticipate – you know this solution will create problems you can’t now anticipate so you prepare by using flexible solutions that will expand; you proactively seek the next problem, taking the offensive and strategically mining these problems for new solutions, thus driving innovation. You integrate the motion of the solution cycle into your business, using it to pull you forward.
Avoiding the problem in the hopes that it will resolve itself is one of the main choices made by businesses today. But avoidance has a way of increasing the potential damages that choosing to do nothing can cause.
Throwing money at those pesky problems is another favorite tactic. Once you’ve figured out that the problem can’t be avoided, then the next step companies overwhelmingly choose is to throw money at it – as if a problem can be bought off. Don’t fool yourself that money spent to solve only one issue actually solves the problem. What people forget, is that issues are multi-faceted and will usually rear their ugly heads again, once they’ve worked their way around the quick fix you’ve purchased. What if the cost involved in expansion could be relegated to an expense item rather than a capital outlay that required retooling your budget? What if you could address a problem quickly, efficiently and organically within the structure of your current system and move on easily to be ready for the next one. Because one thing is certain – there is always a next one.
The more quickly and proactively you manage your solution cycle, the higher your competitive advantage. When you’re set up to manage the occurrence of problems and solutions, the next problem occurs as an opportunity and doesn’t slow business. As we’ll see in my next posts, new problems can actually excite your company and pull it forward.
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