What is the secret to innovate in the IT market?

By José Geraldo Garcia, CIO of Homine

Customers and colleagues ask me what are the key success factors for innovating in the Information Technology market. Do you think new technologies like the Machine Learning? Do we need to form a highly technical team to innovate? What is the investment required? Is the return guaranteed?

There are many questions, but the answers are simpler than we imagine.

We are living a technological revolution that transforms our lives every day. With a tap on the screen smartphone, you can find out the Singapore weather forecast, request a car, rent a bike from the street or take a call work from anywhere.

In the day-to-day of our IT universe, we deal with system migrations, robust programming and implementation of solutions for automating customer processes. By trade, we are deeply technological. We need to know what is most advanced in technology – Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Computing, Blockchain, big data, Biometrics, to mention just a few of them – and understand how these innovations bring more value to client companies.

The fact is that new technologies are out there on the market, available to everyone, ready to be incorporated into processes, products and systems. To innovate, however, it is necessary to go beyond them. But how?

Through two strategies: anticipation It is synergy.

Innovating is getting ahead and anticipating the “pain” of the company and/or market. It means understanding the operational bottlenecks that generate costs and inefficiencies, the difficulties of work routines and processes carried out in all areas: tax, accounting, administrative, logistics and production. It is necessary not only to “be inside” organizations, but above all “inside” them: to understand their business and absorb their pain. And from there create the innovative solution that will untie the knots of the company, bringing more efficiency, results and simplicity.

Synergy with partners and developers, in turn, is crucial for delivering transformative solutions to customers. If today you do not have the necessary knowledge in Deep Learning, for example, to create a program that will “change the life” of a company, then look for partners and professionals who can join you to develop the best possible solution. The technical and innovative potential of a company is not – and cannot be – static: it is incremental and open to collaborations, through synergies and partnerships. In this sense, innovative capacity knows no limits.

Returning to the initial question, the adoption of new technologies is a key success factor for innovating in the IT segment, but it is the most basic of them. Anticipating market needs and working in synergy to build transforming solutions are factors that, in fact, make the wheel of innovation turn.

Wheel that, by the way, turns faster and faster. There is no time to lose.