Technology Roadmap

 Developing a business is a multi-faceted set of tasks. In the past, we’ve discussed elements like using marketing technology, KPIs, and creating a culture of continuous improvement. The next step here is making sure that you start to integrate all these different elements. This requires a plan, and here’s a look at how to start assembling a roadmap as a senior leader in your organization.
 
First, let’s talk about the specific use of a roadmap. This lets the entire team know where the organization stands and where you want it to go, but there is more to it. A common issue that a lot of organizations face is leaders having one concept of a strategy, but the people on the front line having a different perspective based on what they know. A roadmap helps ensure that everyone has the same perspective, so your execution is harmonious.
 
A major part of making sure that you have a roadmap that actually allows for this is using analytics. You may know what a roadmap makes sense to you internally, but how about how you compare to your competitors? Implementing competitor data in your roadmap helps showcase how, at certain points in your process, you can improve. This iterative cycle is what organizational maturity is all about. Senior leaders need to bring together strategy, technology, and KPIs to fully understand where they are.
 
Another point that we should make here is that when it comes to matching KPIs and technology strategies, you need to think about your organizational capabilities. This is ultimately about people, not technology. What is your team trained to do, and what are they capable of doing? With 7,000 different products out there, your roadmap needs to include ways to make sure your entire team is up to speed with the 25-3 that you may end up doing. An important secondary component to this is “united organization.” This means integrating the tools and data that the tools provide.
 
Let’s give an example. Say that a company was doing web analytics, and they had a website that drew in some business. The next step in terms of organizational maturity is digital marketing being a driver of business rather than passively capturing business. This generally means being aligned with the customer journey, and to do this, companies need to build their tech and organizational capabilities.
 
To help our clients put together their take on this roadmap, we put together a worksheet to ask basic questions to start. This includes things like:
 
 
●      What’s your alignment?
●      What’s your strategy?
●      How well are you able to assess competitive forces in your organization?
●      How important is being digital to your own organization?
 
From there, we can start asking deeper questions about each client’s own organizational capabilities to figure out where they are. Once you have a clear starting point, you have the first step of your organizational maturity roadmap.
 
After you know where you are, you want to figure out where you want to go. As we’ve discussed before, it all ties back to corporate goals, like growing revenue or driving costs down. With start and endpoints, you can figure out the best path between those two points, based on what your organization is capable of achieving. This can be through content management systems, improving the buyer journey, or marketing automation. The main core values here, though, are value and speed. Every goal you have is likely going to boil down to one of these two points. For example, trying to get more ROI? That’s value. Want a more efficient customer management process? This is speed.
 
This roadmap will be key for helping you make strides towards organizational maturity, but you also need to execute. One ideal method is a scrum method, having teams get together and create smaller sets of deliverables on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. Be sure to follow the Mahdlo blog for more advice and info on how to help build up your business.