Digital transformations aren’t built in a day. As convenient as that would be, your organization can’t expect to serve your customers, partners, and employees—or grow and lead your sector—by adopting new technology, flipping a switch, and moving on.
Transformation is a continuous process, much of which happens after you make technological changes, measure quantitative and qualitative results, and fine-tune your products and processes. These projects often falter in post-delivery areas like DevOps, so an organization must be diligent even after a project’s “completion” to realize the full value of technological improvements.
To lead in any business sector—whether aeronautics, energy, fast food, major-league sports, or any other—it is critical to partner with a technology consultancy, like World Wide Technology, that shares and builds your long-range vision and has the resources and expertise to implement your vision. Such a partnership can help you make the decisions that expand your ambitions, lead your market, and ensure that long-range plans are delivered to support your success.
Co-Developing New Ideas
Insitu, a Boeing-owned manufacturer of unmanned aircraft systems that collects environmental data, recently sought to expand its offerings beyond its U.S. Department of Defense contract to enter additional markets. To achieve this, they needed to build a cloud-based platform for data collection and analysis that it could iterate quickly, letting customers store, analyze, and make data-based decisions in near-real-time.
To develop its cloud-based applications, the company partnered with an information technology advisor that had broad expertise in user experience (UX), application programming interfaces (API), security, DevOps, infrastructure management, automation, quality assurance, and agile training.
The partnership “wasn’t just to provide programmers to work on problems we defined, but to co-develop the idea,” said Rahul Thakkar, Insitu’s director of Commercial Cloud.
Insitu and its partner assembled a cross-functional team to build its scalable and powerful cloud-based solution, applying the consultancy’s discipline and mentorship to quickly bring the new platform online globally. And as the platform can support future cloud-computing, data-storage, and application-development innovations, the partnership will continue.
“We’re at chapter one of Insitu’s cloud journey,” said Jon Damush, Insitu’s chief growth officer. “There will be many, many chapters in this book.”
Blurring the Lines of Collaboration
In 2019, McCoy Global, a Canadian oil-and-gas-equipment manufacturer, decided to turn its products into internet of things (IoT) devices that could measure and serve drilling data to customers and third-party experts on a cloud platform. Potential benefits of this strategy included reducing the need for on-site expertise at drill sites—cutting costs and improving safety—and securing McCoy’s market leadership.
McCoy needed scalable cloud infrastructure with an IoT architecture and custom application development outside the primary expertise of its information-technology (IT) practice. The company partnered with an expert technology advisory firm to build and execute the cloud-based IoT project and custom applications to connect devices, process and store data at scale, and manage applications safely and in real time.
The partner collaborated with McCoy to bring its cloud-platform interface online, using agile processes to iterate all the new features and prioritize their deployment. “The cross-functional engagement really blurred the line between McCoy and WWT,” said Richard Chism, McCoy’s project manager for digital transformation. “We were able to move at an incredibly high velocity.”
Today, as it explores new ways to help customers make automated, data-driven decisions, McCoy is still working with its chosen technology and consulting partner. “We’re excited about the next phases in front of us,” Chism said. “This is going to be an ongoing digital journey.”
Steady Partnership for Unsteady Times
Among other sectors disrupted by the pandemic, more customers use mobile apps to satisfy their hunger than ever before. One sandwich chain, Jersey Mike’s, recently rebuilt its online ordering system, developed a mobile app, and integrated a marketing stack to improve its digital experience for customers and simultaneously generate more end-user data for additional insights.
Partnering closely with its technology consultancy, the chain rebuilt its online presence with more agility and scalability, overhauling its online ordering system and using its customer data platform (CDP), product intelligence, and automated mobile marketing to acquire and act on deeper customer insights.
The change positioned Jersey Mike’s to handle the pandemic’s unpredictability, as its strengthened capabilities for contactless ordering and delivery helped the chain to seamlessly manage an explosion in mobile orders, and to quickly add delivery options and customize pricing and offers with new automated marketing tools.
With its significant increase in revenue through mobile orders, and millions of new (and engaged) users of its mobile app, the chain’s technology partnership is one built to handle the growth it hopes to maintain for the road ahead.
Looking Ahead with True Guidance
Planning for your organization’s future means expanding the way you work and serve both internal and external stakeholders. Partnering with the right technology consultancy, with a broad range of creative and strategic capabilities, backed by a global implementation reach, and that can give your customers the great experience they deserve is the next step you can take to experiment, innovate, and grow.
Learn how partnering with World Wide Technology can help you build your business.