Tech is Everywhere

…No duh.

Without going into the obligatory explanation behind trying to use a punchy, eye-catching, confusingly-obvious-but-hopefully-mysterious title, the first point is a reminder that this newsletter is primarily about digital tech in the business environment.

We may touch on hardware at points or operational technology (OT), or we may casually wander into consumer tech every now and then, but the underlying assumption of “tech strategy” is that we are talking about information technology (IT), i.e. software applications and other digital systems.

This is important because, up until recently, most have associated the word “tech” with things like TVs, smart phones, computers, tablets, etc.

Really, the same has been true in the business realm, too. At most offices around the world, you are issued a PC or macbook on your first day or you get acquainted with your “station”.

Only over the course of the past decade has the presumption shifted.

Now, when someone says they “work in tech”, that could mean a software company like Hubspot just as easily as as it could Apple or Samsung.

So, by stating something seemingly obvious like “tech is everywhere”, what we’re referring to is the fact that digital tech is being used by just about every single department, up and down the corporate ladder, to service every major business function. The average worker isn’t just using word documents or excel spreadsheets anymore.

Along with that slow shift in the definition of “tech” has been the rise of software platforms or services for every activity from sales and service to accounting and operations…and a whole lot more. 

This “sprawl” has become so pervasive in fact that, on average, even medium-sized companies had 422 different software applications in use in 2023 (according to Zylo, and that was after a decline from 2022).

This, of course, means that the spend on digital tech has started to balloon, as well, something you might have noticed from the chart above. 

Now, once we get into the realm of corporate digital spend, that’s where things start getting really interesting:

Think about that for a moment…

That means that for the tech stack employed by a typical firm, it is likely only a little more than half of it was actually sourced and procured by people whose job is to be responsible for tech.

If you’ve had any experience in the corporate world at all, this makes sense, but it makes sense in the way that things you’ve always known but never took note of make sense.

So what?

There is a lot of tech used by businesses. It’s costly. And a good chunk of it is under the control of non-techy people. What are we getting at? What does this have to do with tech strategy?

This is what we’re getting at:

Decisions about tech can no longer solely lie with IT leaders.

This, of course, has major implications for tech strategy.

Not only do the points above make the concept more important and valid, they point to the need that tech strategy is quite simply something that business leaders need to formulate and implement, not just tech leaders.

It means that tech strategy should be just as important to the CEO and CFO as it is to the CIO.

Ok, the main crux of the point has been made, but let’s take a step back and to the side for just a moment.

With some holdouts, almost every customer in the marketplace (whether consumer or business) expects to be engaged through digital channels at some point in the sales process. They might be ok with a phone call. They might be ok with an email. However, they want multi-channel engagement, and at least one of those channels to be a semi-smart, semi-automated, online platform where they have partial control over the transaction.

Tech is no longer just a supporting element. It’s part of the business. It’s part of strategy.

Tech strategy, then, should flow from business strategy.

-Jordan