How Enterprises Can Stop Wasting Money on Failed Digital Initiatives

For large enterprises, the path to digital success is littered with pricey consultant reports gathering dust on shelves. Despite investing millions into strategic plans and future-state visions, businesses often struggle to actually implement and deliver value to customers in a meaningful timeframe.

‍

"We'll go and speak to them, and they'll pull out the service blueprint from one of the big consultancies - and the date on it will be from 2020," says Stephen Horner, Chief Product Officer of RUSH, a technology firm with an alternative approach to enterprise digital initiatives. "There's this feeling of 'Okay, we're left with a strategic document, but how do we actually get that into the hands of customers?'"

‍

It's a scenario playing out across industries as businesses race to modernise and meet rapidly evolving customer expectations set by digital giants like Uber, Airbnb and Amazon. Consumers have become accustomed to intuitive mobile experiences and seamless digital services. Yet for many enterprises, delivering on those world-class experience benchmarks feels frustratingly out of reach.

‍

"We need to understand how we can enable companies here to deliver a lot of value on budgets that aren't the same size as those global players," Horner explains. "Because those competitive forces are coming."

‍

Part of the challenge is one of scale. As Terry Williams-Willcock, RUSH's Chief Customer Officer points out, "New Zealand's GDP is around USD $250 billion per year. The global GDP is over USD $100 trillion per year - we are a tiny speck in an ocean of innovation and investment."

‍

Without the financial resources of an Amazon or Google, Kiwi enterprises can struggle to rapidly design, prototype and roll out new digital services and business models. There's a risk of getting bogged down in years of strategy and planning compared to actually executing.

‍

"If you're doing a massive transformation program, you might not be able to deliver any customer value because it's all caught up in the strategy phase without any action or deliverables," says Horner.

‍

It's this costly "strategy-execution gap" that RUSH solves through its shift left methodology. Rather than traditional consultancy models of lengthy upfront planning, RUSH works incrementally - identifying high-impact opportunities, quickly validating them through prototyping and customer testing, then iterating and scaling what works.

‍

The process starts with an "envision" phase to deeply understand the client's business strategy, technology landscape and customer needs. But it quickly moves into hands-on design and delivery, ensuring a constant flow of working software releases that maximise customer value.

‍

"We're very passionate about turning that strategy into action," says Horner. "We know what it feels like to scale products and ensure value gets delivered."

‍

For Z Energy, this approach allowed RUSH to take a transformative concept like mobile payment at fuel pumps and get it developed and piloted in just 13 weeks - unheard of pace compared to typical multi-year programs.

‍

"That speed created momentum within the organisation and changed the whole culture around continuous innovation," recalls Horner. "If we're not getting things into customers' hands quickly and seeing the value, then we're just an industry and a country moving at a snail's pace when we've got big problems to solve."

‍

As enterprises funnel billions into digital transformation agendas, there are valuable lessons in RUSH’s philosophy. Rather than endlessly strategising, the priority must be rapid delivery of iterative customer value - leveraging modern composable architecture that allows for nimble building atop existing tech stacks.

‍

For businesses worried about being outmanoeuvred by deep-pocketed global rivals, the risk of years-long planning cycles is obvious: you may have the most beautiful strategy blueprint, but your customers will have defected to another digital disruptor who actually shipped something first.

‍

Find out more about how RUSH can work with you on a digital strategy you can actually deliver.
‍