A Great Culture Needs an IT Operational Backbone to Ensure Success

Family business leaders are becoming more aware of the importance of great corporate culture and its role in driving business success. Leaders know that business success is generated and realised from the growth of the people who work and believe in it - shared values.

Leaders take responsibility for setting the family business strategy, from the structure and ongoing measuring and monitoring outcomes to make the company successful. Leaders are the backbone of a family business.

Working alongside the Leaders and behind the scenes is the foundation of all good business, an IT operational backbone capable of delivering customer-centric innovations and service levels.

This area is often ignored as an essential part of a business until something goes wrong.

How recently have you thought about your current IT system or updated it?

Many companies don't view IT solutions as a whole and in the same context. Thinking about how your business's IT is architected/designed is the best place to start. The design’s required goal is to ensure it is underpinning interactions and synchronising between people, processes, data and technology.

Some leaders hope that all of their business's IT systems and activities will somehow, through the company's culture, come together and enable them to figure out how to solve business challenges and deliver new innovations in previously impossible ways.

Suppose a company is to grow and succeed.

In that case, it is critical that family business leaders, through the application of IT systems, address the need to synchronise these technology-driven capabilities.

Does your business -

• Provide staff with the right tools to do their job well? Not just physical devices. Invest in connecting business systems to minimise double handling of information and limit the potential for human error. Enabled staff to become significant contributors to their success and the company.
• Collect meaningful data and not just any data for data's sake, including collecting data that may lead to unnecessary complications and security risks.
• Empower customers to connect with the business better. Provide real-time access to information, with self-serve capabilities wherever and whenever possible, to augment (not necessarily replace) existing service levels.

Ideally, businesses require seamless technology-enabled interactions between people and systems. Hence, customers experience little or no friction as they progress from the point of intent (enquiry) to purchase and ultimately service.

To achieve this, careful and strategic consideration of every aspect of the IT operational backbone responsible for synchronising people, processes, data and technology must be in place.

Without it, even a great company culture will likely deteriorate over time into an ordinary one, or worse with staff and customer departures, stifling business growth and long-term profits.

A great culture demands and relies on technology for it to fulfil its potential. People have come to expect continuous IT improvements. Understanding and appreciating the relationship between culture and systems is a sure way to help break down silos and siloed thinking.

An integrated IT system provides the connection points between the right people at the right time regardless of their job function or location. It enables quicker decision-making and reaction to external forces, improving customer acquisition and retention rates.

Written by Tal Evans