Evaluating your technology
A different task than it appears
By Will Hill, MBA
September 22, 2023
My kids love going to hands-on museums and interactive learning centers. A popular item are those crazy mirrors — where you are made to look very different than what you actually are. I love that confused look on their faces when they see a new one for the first time. I see that same look on many firm leaders faces as they look to evaluate the technology in their firms, as the process is often different than it first appears.
At first glance, we want to approach evaluating our technology through the lens of the technology itself. Does it work? Do we have problems and get locked out? Do we lose data? Is it easy for team members to use?Someone from a firm could go through and answer these questions on each technology tool, walking away with a feeling of accomplishment for evaluating their technology. But what really happened here? It was a functional look at tools, done without enough context relating to other matters in the firm.
Looking back at this action, it likely felt methodical and clinical.
So, how can this be done differently? How can this necessary activity shift from a mundane task to a valued improvement process for the firm? Here are four keys to help you
PICK a better way: problem solve, include people, context and keep forward.
Problem Solve
Your evaluation should be anchored in what problems you are trying to solve. This is the real starting point. If we are not looking to solve problems, there is no need to spend time evaluating your technology in the firm.
However, having one — or multiple — problems to solve will allow you to focus the evaluation in two directions: The technology involved in the problem area and the elements of the problem area which do not have technology – but perhaps should.
Let’s look at an example. There is a lot of noise around client collaboration and your firm wrestling with getting client data. Your firm has technology in place, and also gets sales calls from vendors with new portal and collaboration tools all the time. Where do you start? Well, you start by defining the problem that you are looking to solve. In this case, we must decide if this is about tax data, accounting data, new client information or all the above? For this example, let’s key in on the tax data struggle that our sample firm is having. Now we have a problem to solve that is defined, we can truly start the technology evaluation.
Include People
The technology evaluation, in this example around obtaining tax data from customers, cannot be done by just going into each tool and “checking under the hood”. You must involve people! That means considering how staff interacting with the technology? What are they doing in the systems? Does it work for most people? Are there extra keystrokes that make it overly complex for the average user? What risks are we exposed to when using the technology?
We also cannot forget about the multiple roles interacting with the technology. In our example, it may be that those who are on the front end with data collection are not the same as those who deliver the returns. Because of the multiple roles, communication must also be considered. How is communication happening — is it automated or manual? You will not be able to identify potential communication issues without talking to people.
Context
The sheer number of technology tools has grown dramatically in the last few years for most firms. Often, tools are used to solve precise functions — but not in their entirety. It’s therefore important to know the context of the problems the tools are solving. If we evaluate tools out of context, we miss opportunities to focus on the right parts of the tools. We also may be quicker to negatively judge a tool because of how little it is used compared to what it could be doing. Context helps us shed light on that and weigh the cost/benefit more clearly.
Keep looking forward
We must lean forward in our evaluation of tools (and processes) in the firm. If we only look at what is needed for today, without consideration for when trends are taking the firm and services, we miss critical elements. An example of this is simply the current explosion of AI. You may not be an AI expert, or see what you will do with AI today, but it is still necessary to be ready to leverage advancements in AI and other related solutions. Are your solutions ones that allow access to the data, or completely close the data?
Another element of looking forward is not just about the technology, but the service focus. Should your firm see growth opportunity in the outsourced CFO role, for example, the prioritization of accounting data and tools should be impacted accordingly. Part of this goes back to being contextual — are the tools ones we need only for a limited time? Is there clean-up work that is worth doing in old applications that you plan on exiting in the next year and are there ways to make that transition simpler?
Evaluation as a continual process
Evaluating technology is really about the experience of the clients and your team with that technology. “PICK”ing the right toolset is a continuous process and should be done as needed. As long as technology, services and ultimately client needs keep evolving, you will want to have your technology evaluation be a consistent staple at the firm.
Will Hill, MBA, is the owner of Will Hill Consults LLC. You may reach him at will@willhillconsults.com or https://www.linkedin.com/in/wghill/. Learn more about Will Hill Consultants LLC at https://willhillconsults.com/.
