Published on the 16/08/2016 | Written by Beverley Head
Forget getting advantage from technology alone – it’s a doomed strategy…
The chief innovation officer of veteran IT business Jade Software has pointed that competitive advantage won’t come from technology alone. After 33 years with the company, John Ascroft warned this week that, “You can’t get competitive advantage from technology any longer because it goes obsolescent. It’s got to come from the culture.”
That realisation, he said, had led to a rethink at Jade, which has adopted a more design-led approach to systems development. “Over [the course of] ten years, we have moved from leading with systems analysts, to leading with business analysts, to now leading with user experience. Coding almost becomes an implementation detail,” he said during a media event in Sydney.
In order to foster a culture of greater creativity the organisation – which is headquartered in New Zealand – has worked with fine arts academics to encourage staff to be more creative. But, there is a limit, Ascroft acknowledged; “We don’t want to turn them into Cirque du Soleil,” he quipped – but the company clearly wants more creative nous from its developers.
That resonates for Sarah Cummings, general manager of development for Jade client ClearView. She said that when developing user facing systems solutions it was important to design “Not just functional – it needs to be beautiful,” in order to get people to use the system.
She said her appointment was also indicative of the less technical focus favoured in some enterprises. Cummings came from the business rather than the technology side of the house, and has no developers on staff, preferring instead to partner with companies like Jade.
Craig Beveridge, general manager of Jade in Australia, agreed this more design focused approach required an internal rethink. “We talk a lot now about outcomes. That can be a challenge because we have had such a stronghold in systems and platforms.” Programming he acknowledged was “Dropping down the stack” in terms of importance.
He said that making outcomes rather than systems the focus, which ultimately meant it was more likely that solutions would be a better fit for the client.
Ascroft said this approach had also impacted the hiring and organisational policies of the business, where people were expected to operate in cross-functional teams with designers and coders working together. That meant the company was “hiring on culture ahead of ability.” Someone with lesser skills but the right cultural fit, was more likely to be hired than a skilled individual who was a cultural misfit.
