Why is creating an innovative business environment important?

The above quote is from an article written by Clayton M. Christensen, who highlighted several important points. Everyone wants to accomplish their tasks, whether individuals or companies.

Everyone wants to accomplish their tasks, whether individuals or companies. However, for profit-driven companies, completing the job quickly and efficiently is crucial, as any delay or inefficiency could affect their profits. But is having skilled employees the only key factor in determining the success of the job?

Certainly not. Employees can work efficiently only if they have the necessary tools, which depends on the organization, how the processes are managed, and how innovative the organizational environment is. In other words:

if you are using handwritten invoices, the solution is not that you hire people who can write faster.

The solution is to implement software that generates the invoices automatically.

If your clients are calling you constantly asking about their orders, the solution is not to hire more customer service people but to set up a customer portal where they can check all that order information.

If your order items are lying around the production floor without anyone knowing where exactly they are, the solution is not to assign a person who walks around all day and checks the orders. The solution is to implement a job order management system.

If we look at things from this angle, ‘getting the job done” gets a whole new perspective.

This whole situation applies to jewelry companies as well. Implementing a jewelry management solution brings a positive impact on the whole organization: things get done faster, and employees feel more comfortable because all the tools they need to work more efficiently are available. Ultimately, the company can make more profits and/or grow.

The trap where many fail: you must get the job done before you can get the job done

Now, this whole jewelry management software idea sounds very cool. No jewelry company would say ‘no’ to it. But our article’s title hints at an important aspect: you don’t hire jewelry software; you implement it.

Implementation does not happen overnight. This is a process that requires tremendous effort from both the PIRO team and the customer. Mapping all the processes, cleaning the data, creating order workflows, automating inventory movements, testing the configuration, and importing data – these are all tasks that need to be checked off the list before you can start reaping the benefits.

No other digital transformation is different. You cannot cut corners. Or you can, but you will regret it later.

Why do I say that this is a trap? Because many would want to have software like this but:

• they skip the initial assessment of what the software should solve, so they lack a clear vision and scope
• they underestimate the time and effort needed for the implementation
• they don’t take it seriously how deeply we have to dig into the company’s processes
• they assign the project to the wrong person; they do not assign it to the person who oversees all operations, instead assigning it to the person “who has more time”

Implementation projects can lose focus when they are postponed for months, halfway through, or if project managers are being replaced.

If a project fails, it hurts the company many times over. It’s not only that time and money were wasted, but the company has to keep working in a troublesome way until a new solution becomes available.

Clayton also brings an example to this scenario:

In the mid-1990s, Scott Cook presided over the launch of a software product called the Quicken Financial Planner, which helped customers create a retirement plan. It flopped. Though it captured over 90% of retail sales in its product category, annual revenue never surpassed $2 million, and it was eventually pulled from the market. […..] Lots of families needed a financial plan, but constructing one actually wasn’t a job that most people were looking to do. 

It is up to us whether we can surpass the intelligence of people in the mid-1990s. To benefit our organization, we must complete the implementation of jewelry software as the final task that needs to be done manually. Thank you for reading this article, and congratulations on gaining insight into this vital aspect of the business environment.