This is useful or nevertheless cool

Francisco Javier Cruz

June 21, 2016

In the business environment in which we work, aimed at companies and influenced by continuous technological developments, it has always been quite complicated to overcome certain barriers standing between what suppliers propose and what the customers finally decide to acquire.

Historically we have relied on tools for calculating return on investment, arguments for which we proposed use cases easily understood by not necessarily technologically-minded customers, etc

In short, we required measures that offered a business argument in order to sell a more easily understandable value for people who, in most cases, did not understand the technological basis of what they were being offered.

Even so, the task was arduous and complex, and in many cases, with low or insufficient results.

Fortunately, yet not as quickly as we all would have liked, we have been learning from the experience and we have been gradually focusing our aim.

• There are barriers that, from my point of view, are already being overcome or are in the process of being removed:
  The availability of deployment and business models that facilitate adoptions (cloud, pay-per-use).These models facilitate adoption  since they do not require committed investment. The costs are predictable, flexible and allow acquisition of only what is actually necessary.
• Simplicity of use and focus on elements of added value.It is something that the consumer market has taught us over many years, and fortunately, we have understood and incorporated it.
• Integration into the corporate business environment.
  A vertical approach makes increasingly more sense. We begin from what the customer values to optimize their business (or their needs for public service in the case of public administrations), and integrate what truly adds value in that existing business environment.

But there is an additional element that for some time, with the new generations of business users, has become gradually important, and that will continue to grow in importance over time.

The arrival of millennials* in the professional environment has led to elements that were acquired natively by this group that have become important: the attractiveness of the service or the way in which it is accessed, how versatile it is, accessibility from any environment; in short, elements that have been already important in the consumer market for many years.

Companies now need to make working with them attractive and motivating for these new generations.

We must convince decision-makers, but we also have to create something that users love; they must enjoy their new working environment.

Javier Cruz.


*Millennial describes a generation of people born between the 80s and the late 90s or at the beginning of the second millennium.
In this case, I mention this term to emphasize the fact that they have grown up in an environment of economic boom and continuous technological advances; Essentially, in an information society in which, naturally, they have acquired some uses and customs that facilitate the use of innovation and its incorporation into everyday life.