Each Sunday our goal is to share a piece of gold with you. Some small piece of information that helps you to have a better week and achieve a better outcome.  

Most businesses only utilize about 30% of the capabilities of the technology that they have in place. This often leads to duplicate software (because people find a new software to do what they didn’t know already exists in their current software), security issues, complexity, and obviously additional expense.  

On top of that, different people or groups in the organization will do things in different ways which leads to dirty data and inconsistency.  

To solve this problem, I suggest making sure that you have a system owner (SO) for each primary application. The SO should be responsible for knowing the full capabilities of the application and how it can serve the organization. This should include going to or attending virtual training sessions, reading through the release notes, providing feedback to the vendor of ideas and enhancements, and providing training for the organization. It is very common for an organization to do training when an application is initially implemented, but over time, training is done via peers or supervisors—who likely don’t have vision into all the enhancements a system has been given.  

The SO should also meet with leaders in the organization to get feedback, learn workflows, and help to develop efficiencies in the organization to increase employee satisfaction and reduce costs.  

Additionally, the SO should have a good relationship with the vendor in order to obtain support when it is necessary and train others how to get support, so the SO is not a single point of failure.  

While this will take some time initially and on an ongoing basis, the investment will pay off in spades by reducing friction in the business, increasing security, and helping the organization to maximize its technology investments.  

The goal of Adapt or Die is to build better leaders who run better companies and change the world. “Better leaders” doesn’t just mean in the office, but at home too. If you’d like a copy of our Technology Alignment Worksheet, purchase your copy of Adapt or Die here and then go to adaptordie.com/assets to get started. I hope it saves you time and money!