Investment in tech generating value for the company

A significant part of a technology leader’s job is to hand-pick a team of technology professionals that will help generate value for a company. Once that team is selected and is as lean and competent as possible, the next task is to analyze:

• Which technologies (and projects) are strategic and should be developed and managed in-house
• Which technologies are commodities and could be outsourced 

This type of decision includes considering costs for both scenarios, supplier costs and internal costs, since even if a project is outsourced, it still must be monitored by the internal team and somehow integrated with the other company’s systems.  

Having a senior technology professional on board as early as possible is key to carrying out these assessments. A technology manager who plays a leading role in a company’s early stages can plan all the processes, both from the point of view of systems development and implementation and in building the team and defining management processes. 

On the other hand, a technology manager hired by a company that has grown disorganized is left with the more laborious task of reviewing all the processes and, in most cases, revisiting roles, seniority, and attributions in his or her team. 

Ideally, a technology leader should be able to clearly demonstrate to the CFO and CEO of his company that, for every dollar invested in the technology team, there is a greater return on the initial investment. This is something simple to point out by analyzing the difference between the cost of maintaining and operating an in-house system and a viable alternative provided by a third party. Sometimes, this difference amounts to millions of dollars a year. 

In addition, any improvement that a technology team makes to the systems of a company that is scaling up its processes, no matter how small, can generate real value for the business. For areas that are strategic for the company, developing the technology in-house also generates advantages, such as:

• Greater control over the tools
• Customization of the technology to the company’s needs
• Nurturing the possibility of innovation

Innovation and experiments should always be at the heart of any technology company. And with experiments sometimes mistakes happen, so managers should keep in mind that the only professionals who never make mistakes are those who only work on obvious projects. 

The tech team

If there are no financial resources for a complete technology team at the early stages of a company, resources can be created by efficiency gains in the technology area, for example, by making developers more productive, reducing technical debt, and reinvesting this productivity gain. But it’s also important to pay attention to how quickly a technology team grows because the bigger it gets, the more complex it will be to manage it.

Innovation and experiments should always be at the heart of any technology company.

While a team is smaller, it’s easier to manage what each person does and to be more judicious when recruiting. Once the area reaches a certain number of professionals, there is a need to establish control and supervision processes, standardize platforms and tools, and define clear guidelines. Orderly and well-thought-out growth avoids the painful step of taking away freedoms and imposing restrictions on a team that is already used to doing things in its own ways.

A platform mindset is about extracting the most value from the technology team while maintaining a great culture, solid platforms and tools, and reducing technical debts and inefficiencies.