Business-driven technology vs. technology-enabled business

It is a conventional truth that technology helps businesses deal with the challenges they face. The average ERP consultant tends to ask what the pains are and proposes a solution that will cure them. Finding solutions to business problems has a cumulative effect and positions the ERP systems of the leading vendors, which reflect a whole lot of good business practices and “recipes” for solving popular business problems, as excellent examples of a business-driven technology. No doubt, this approach has its merits and brings value to business. However, it poses a self-limitation to resolving problems that already exist and to catching up in those areas where you already stay behind but the approach does not go beyond that to seek qualitatively new ways of doing business. In fact, technology can not only transform a business but it provides opportunities to create businesses that we could hardly imagine could have existed, at least any close to the way we know them, without the underlying technology. I refer to these businesses as to “technology-enabled businesses”. Watch out! By focusing too much on the benefits of using a business-driven technology for your industry, you might overlook an opportunity to become a pioneer into a new “flavor” of a technology-enabled business within the industry.