Not all investments are going to reward you at time of company sale
Ask yourself this question, what is my company’s highest level strategic need that will help me accelerate growing my company worth and how could a technology enable it? Too many company owners and CEO’s today are more focused on a technology but not first on the strategic business need or opportunity that needs to be addressed. Only until you know what your strategic need is that will build your company worth, should you then focus investment dollars and your team’s time on embracing a new technology. Technology can be a great tactical solution, but it should be linked to solving a strategic need the business has.
We also see owners/CEO’s investing in a technology only to find later that there were less expensive and less complex solutions. But because they didn’t frame the company opportunity or challenge properly on the front end, they too quickly went down the rabbit hole with a technology. The risk then becomes that the technology takes money and time but doesn’t enable the business at a strategic level so it doesn’t build company worth in the eyes of a future acquirer. Acquirer’s look closely at capital expenditure investments made when doing their due diligence and it will negatively impact their purchase price if they see your company making technology related investments that don’t truly enable the business in their eyes.
There has been no better time in the history of doing business than now for leveraging what technology can do to enable your company. But the technology isn’t your starting point, strategic thinking and planning to identify the strategic opportunity or challenge is the place to start.
