Australian businesses can no longer afford to apply traditional business strategies to meet consumer and employee demand for digital products and services, argues the co-founder of consulting firm Hypothesis.
“Executives today are under a huge amount of pressure and can sometimes be found guilty of looking for more insight through ongoing strategy initiatives, instead of building forward momentum off a good idea,” says Sean Heydenrych, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Hypothesis, a digital product development firm and AWS Select Partner.
Organisations should let go of wanting to know all the answers before pursuing an idea, according to Heydenrych.
He also warns that unless business leaders know what their customers think and are in a position to do something about it, there is a risk they will head down the wrong path.
“I see boardrooms where people are bringing in traditional business cases with sophisticated market sizing and ROI calculations that have taken months to develop, but seldom has anyone spoken to a real customer,” Heydenrych says.
“The C-Suite, heads of IT or product line managers often focus on trade-offs, paybacks, risk of implementation and a whole bunch of really valid things. But very seldom do they say ‘How do we know that our customers will want this?’” he adds.
This lack of attention to customer’s needs can result in companies building highly functional and polished digital products and services that customers just don’t use or see value in.
To reduce the risk of this occurring, Hypothesis takes leaders on a five-day design sprint aimed at helping them test and validate ideas from their customer’s viewpoint, before putting together a pragmatic plan to move forward. The company promises to help turn an idea into a customer-validated solution prototype during this five-day period. It sees this as providing leaders with the clarity, alignment and momentum needed to bring the right idea to life.
This approach has paid particular dividends for clients that have moved to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and are looking to accelerate their innovation, according to Hypothesis.
Hypothesis has worked with major banking and insurance clients to design and build more than 45 digital products on AWS. It has also made major strides in state and federal government, where there is a big play towards being more citizen centric.
To follow the lead of these organisations, Heydenrych says business leaders need to recognise the importance of moving quickly in today’s digital economy. Spend too long debating ideas and opportunities will pass.
He also encourages leaders to consider their capabilities. Can they solve these issues themselves, or would they benefit from the outsider’s perspective Hypothesis provides?
Contact Hypothesis to find out more about turning your idea into a solution prototype in 5 days.
