The success of your business is reliant upon the interdependent roles of strategy, marketing and technology. However, a few common questions need to be answered prior to outlining the interrelation between these three parts: Should technology drive the strategy or should strategy define the technology? What role does marketing play in choosing the technology for the business? Should I change my business process to fit the best-selling software product in the market? It is often in this web of uncertainties that a business gets stuck and in an attempt to find an easy way out, goes wrong with the implementation.
The relationship between these three critical areas is often perceived to be linear in nature. This eventually leads to treating these three parts as islands among which the information flow is generally unidirectional. Oftentimes, you may end up giving more preference to one area over another which would leave a negative impact on the equilibrium of the business.
In order to maximize the benefits of these three areas, you should maintain a circular relationship between these three islands. Business processes should be designed in a way that will encompass all three islands. The three disciplines must exchange information among themselves in order to design a more cohesive and integrated business process.
“As a business, which one do you rate higher – designing a strategy or implementing the strategy?”
The above statement establishes the importance of having a circular interrelation between strategy, marketing and technology. All three functions should work in tandem within all aspects of your business to ensure customer satisfaction and retention – starting from the design of your product or service to delivery.
This current generation of customers is very demanding. We can no longer isolate these functions if we want to acquire and retain their business. We must establish a connection among the functions.
A well-designed strategy can give you a perfect road map to success. However, implementation is as important as design. Similarly, if you are starting late in terms of technology adaption, you can often get carried away by software features. Implementing new software without examining how it best fits into your overall strategy can result in a huge waste of resources and money.
A great strategy which is well-supported by the marketing department and the perfect technology tools can yield wonderful results. Your key to success lies in understanding the interdependencies of strategy, marketing and technology, and enabling mechanisms to trigger information flow among them whenever necessary.
