Technology in general and SAMC (social, analytics, mobile & cloud) in particular, has democratized innovation.
Exceptional is the name of the game- pick something that is of value to your clients (however large or small the market
segment is) and then be exceptional at delivering the product/service. As a result, customers that want ordinary need to be
fired, so that you can focus on thrilling the ones that identify with your brand and your offering.
Create blue oceans by fostering and engendering innovation. rather than competing in the crowded red ocean- who cares if
the blue ocean is smaller than the red ocean- at least its yours for the taking. Uber and Lyft found a niche and went all out
with a maniacal focus to capitalize on areas of weakness of the traditional car rental and cab companies. Netflix did that as
well and as a result, annihilated Blockbuster.
IDC predicts that enterprise data growth will average around 50% per year through 2016, with storage costs consuming
nearly 20% of the typical IT budget in 2014. There is a huge opportunity for innovative storage companies that are
charting out a new value paradigm. Yet, there are a plethora of “me too” storage products out there in the market today
which offer the same thing.
When there is no differentiation, customers choose the cheapest option- economics drives the decision-commodities
cannot command a price premium. Beauty is in the eyes of the Beholder and it behooves us to paint a different picture on
a different canvass.With the reality of rapidly changing business models and reduced time to value based on drastically
shrinking I2E (Idea to Execution) windows, businesses need to be more agile. As the need for business agility increases,
cloud-based computing has emerged as a high-growth area and will continue to attract significant VC funding.
Key, differentiated providers will exhibit high PE (price to earnings) ratios rewarded by Wall Street. Infrastructure as a
service and business process as a service are the fastest-growth segments of the IT services marketplace, expanding 44.9%
and 12.4%, respectively in 2014, according to Gartner.There is an opportunity today, for IT managed service providersclients are tired of paying huge amounts in service contracts without anything to show for- consulting firms earn hefty
fees based on SOWs (statement of work) that could put ancient Hindu manuscripts to shame based on their voluminous
and verbose content spanning reams and reams of paper. Service billing based on Time and Material (T&M) is age-old
and not business value focused. After months and years of service engagements, the operation is successful but the patient
is dead. Those vendors who put their money where their mouth is and have skin in the game and flip the traditional way of
billing for services will win.
The Business Benefits Realization Model (BBRM) is an innovative way of pricing your service offering, where you get
paid based on the business benefits realized by your client- if no quantifiable business benefit is realized as a result of
consuming your product/service, then you do not get paid. Now we’re talking- don’t sell me a fish. Teach me how to fish
and let’s cast the line together and share in the spoils together.
36