Article

The Power of Alignment: Preparing Your Organization for Software as a Core Offering

October 29, 2024

By Kim Burmeister | CEO  |

As organizations grow and adapt to the demands of a digital  world, many are looking to expand their product or service lines to include software. While adding software to your offerings can be a game-changing move, it’s not without significant challenges. The key to a successful transition lies in alignment: aligning your strategic vision, assessing and developing internal capabilities, and ensuring that your organization is prepared to take ownership of the software lifecycle.

Understanding the Strategic Vision: Why Do You Want to Offer Software?

Before jumping into software development, it’s essential to understand why adding software aligns with your company’s overarching strategic vision. Ask yourself: How will this new software product or feature serve your core mission? Will it add value to your existing customer base, or are you looking to enter new markets? Without a clear alignment with the strategic vision, software development can easily become an expensive distraction.

Aligning with the strategic vision requires a careful analysis of how software will complement and enhance your existing value proposition. For example, a manufacturing company offering IoT-enabled tools must clearly understand how these tools align with their mission to improve operational efficiencies. Similarly, a retail company introducing an e-commerce platform should be sure it aligns with their commitment to customer accessibility and satisfaction.

To create this alignment, involve stakeholders from across the organization in discussions around the strategic vision for software. Leaders in departments like marketing, operations, sales, and support should have a voice in how this new offering might affect them and what kind of support they would need to contribute effectively. When each department understands and supports the strategic vision, it becomes easier to move forward cohesively. Without a cross-collaboration effort, you will leave important voices out of the vision and end up missing the mark.

Assessing Internal Capabilities: Do You Have the Right Skills?

Once your strategic vision is in place, the next step is to honestly assess whether your organization has the necessary skills to build, launch, and sustain a software product. Often, companies underestimate the technical and cultural shifts required to create software effectively, which can lead to long-term challenges.

Key internal capabilities to evaluate include:

  1. Technical Skills: Does your team have the software development expertise needed to design, develop, test, and maintain a product? Consider both the depth and breadth of skills, as software development requires a range of expertise, from frontend to backend development and from UX design to data science.
  2. Product Management: Software products require a unique approach to product management. Unlike physical products, software products are iterative; they need constant updates, refinements, and sometimes full overhauls. Your organization must understand how to plan, prioritize, and manage these product cycles.
  3. Project Management and Agile Methodology: Software development is often best managed through agile methodologies that allow for iterative progress and adjustments. If your organization is not already familiar with agile principles, training may be necessary to avoid miscommunication and inefficiency.
  4. Customer Support and Training: Supporting a software product requires a team that can offer technical help and training to clients. Software products often come with their own support requirements, which differ significantly from physical or service-based products.

If gaps exist in these areas, you’ll need to plan either to build internal capabilities or find external partners to support your efforts. Skipping this assessment could lead to missed deadlines, customer dissatisfaction, and ultimately a failure to capitalize on the software offering.

Taking Ownership of Software Development: Building for Long-Term Success

Ownership of software means understanding and managing the full lifecycle of the product. From initial ideation to ongoing updates, you must prepare to oversee and control each aspect of development and maintenance. This ownership goes beyond the launch of a software product—it involves commitment to continuous improvement, scaling, and adaptation to emerging trends and technologies.

Why is ownership so crucial? Many organizations that launch a software product with minimal preparation find themselves bogged down by technical debt, an accumulation of shortcuts taken during development that require fixing later. This “debt” can lead to escalating costs, slow updates, and an unsustainable product over time.

Ownership also ensures that you maintain the flexibility to pivot the product based on customer feedback, market conditions, and emerging trends. Without ownership, companies can become dependent on third-party vendors or developers who may not have the same commitment to long-term vision or quality.

Creating an Actionable Plan: Aligning Strategy, Capabilities, and Ownership

Achieving alignment across strategic vision, capabilities, and ownership is not a one-time effort; it requires an actionable plan with clear milestones and checks for accountability. Here are some steps to consider as you prepare to launch a software offering:

  1. Vision Workshops: Conduct workshops with all departments to ensure that the strategic vision for software is clear and actionable. This should be a collaborative process that allows everyone to provide feedback and understand how the software fits into the larger organizational goals.
  2. Capability Audits: Assess the existing skill sets in your team and identify gaps. This may involve hiring new talent, training existing employees, or partnering with specialists. Remember, software development is a team effort, and every skill gap will eventually impact the product.
  3. Agile Training: Ensure that project managers and team members are well-versed in agile methodologies. Agile methods are essential for software development, as they allow for iterative progress and easier handling of challenges as they arise.
  4. Build a Support Infrastructure: Prepare customer support, marketing, and sales teams with the knowledge they need to support a new software offering. This includes understanding the product’s features, common troubleshooting steps, and setting up communication channels for feedback.
  5. Define Ownership Roles: Establish clear ownership for the software lifecycle, from initial development through ongoing support and updates. Determine who will handle updates, respond to customer feedback, and monitor product performance, setting clear KPIs to measure success.
  6. Iterate and Adapt: After the initial launch, continually revisit and adapt your approach based on product performance and customer feedback. Software products thrive on continuous improvement, so establishing a process for iteration is essential.

Expanding your offerings to include software can open new revenue streams, deepen customer relationships, and enhance your brand’s relevance. Before diving into software, take a step back to ensure that your strategic goals are clear, your team is ready, and your organization is prepared to own this new chapter. With proper alignment, your organization can make a smooth transition and deliver software that not only meets customer needs but also strengthens your competitive edge.