Blending Information with Technology and Business Application

Advancements in Information Technology like Big Data, Mobility, Event based Analytics ; availability of fast and online communications globally, portability of communications in global roaming and number portability open a plethora of new business opportunities by leveraging these technologies to promote business , increase revenues and reduce costs. These are what the most information technology departments and consultants offer to businesses as services.
Another key aspect of business is the products and services being produced by business to be sold in the market. These products also need to innovate to compete in their markets and innovating the MIS systems around them is not just good enough. Example of the same is the recently launched new product from Samsung to compete with IPad or Nokia new product with 41MB pixel camera. Even in services the B2C e-commerce portals in India are offering cash on delivery, concept to adapt to local needs. New products like refurbished second hand cars with warranty have started and so has innovation in many food chains where the products are customized to local palette.
All the MIS with new and modern technology will bring the horse to water but may not be enough to have it drink the same. Companies need to constantly evolve their products and services to stay in business.
In a recent CEOs steering meeting that I attended for creating a smart city pilot, I was amused to discover that many companies offered free services or software but very few contributed to equipments needed to implement the same. The success of the project would have benefited the equipment companies much more than it would have benefited the system integrators or software companies as the billions of dollars allocated in the Government’s 12th and 13th annual plans would mostly be for equipment purchases. The question then came as to why the equipment vendors were hesitant to contribute? Are they not spending sizable amounts of money in research and development of their products?
I found that the investments in companies are being disproportionately spent among marketing, information analytics and product innovation. Also, it is much more expensive to innovate a product than the other two areas of spend. If you are under invested, then marketing and MIS can give you a quick ROI which is the low hanging fruit. But what if marketing and information analytics are already overinvested, where will you get your maximum return? The product innovation spend is the only choice and has to be there continually. If you overspend on marketing and MIS, but if your product does not match-up, you may very soon get a negative impact.
Good businesses are the ones which look independently at balancing the marketing; MIS analytics and product innovation spend.