Bridging the technology chasm

In today’s world, the ever-looming demand for businesses to digitally transform seems more pressing than ever.

That means of course, taking active steps toward a digital future for themselves, investing in new technology infrastructure or modernising existing architecture and shifting employees into new ways of working.

And for the most part, the technology to enable this change is readily available, and full of the promise of endless possibility.

A growing gap

While simple to put on paper, making technology investments is a far more complicated feat to action in real business cases, all of which offer unique complexities and multitudes of systems and functions. For many organisations, the complexity of choosing the right technology to optimise their operations can be crippling, especially with the present temptation to simply fall back on incumbent legacy systems that their teams already know how to operate. In other cases, some organisations that made investments to implement new technology solutions that seemingly offered it all, aren’t achieving the ROI they were hoping for.

Indeed, many organisations are stuck in the growing chasm between the promised potential and tangible benefits of technology.

The BBD way

“For BBD, its not about choosing a flavour-of-the-month technology” says Francois van Niekerk, a BBD executive working in the insurance sector “but rather about developing sustainable, long-term and futureproof solutions that are easy to maintain and adaptable to change”.

When it comes to digital, there is simply no tried and tested formula or approach as business scenarios vary from one client to another. BBD is an international software development firm with over 36 years’ experience and more than 900 skilled experts that truly believe in the endless possibilities of technology. But that doesn’t mean that organisations should simply be buying into any offerings in the hopes that the technology will shape their transformation. Instead, BBD favours taking an approach that enables our clients’ unique challenges, complexities and goals to shape the technology solution we provide. No matter your IT environment, we are able to build something new or mend and merge to integrate and modernise what’s already in place.

“When we partnered with a UK-based insurance start-up” notes van Niekerk “they had already been working with a software service provider who just wasn’t able to deliver on what was promised”. For this distressed project, BBD was able to step up to the plate and create the specialised broker platform that the client needed, in as little as six months.

To understand unique client needs and challenges, BBD starts by performing an IT diagnostic health assessment that considers all nuances of your IT environment; from a macro level that looks at industry requirements and specs, overarching end goals and transformation initiatives, to a granular level, identifying the finer details of end-customer needs and tweaks that can enable teams to perform better.

Once conducted, the assessment yields a report that:

• Outlines an all-encompassing best approach for your business
• Identifies where BBD can create, adapt and integrate software
• Indicates which technology can be implemented and deployed
• Shows where your organisation can leverage new methodologies (be it Scrum or Agile)

“In addition to developing the technology roadmap” says Herman Botha, a BBD executive in the public sector, “BBD will innovate using the latest technologies available and in some instances develop propriety technologies to assist with the solution”. In the healthcare sector, as a result of no connectivity, normal communication protocols in the last mile dispensing of medicine were not available to transport data. In this case, BBD developed a proprietary communication technology to overcome the problem.

Within the financial sector, BBD was able to craft a solution for a leading bank that optimised the bank’s regulatory compliance submission processes through transparency, auditability, and traceability. “In as little as three months,” explains BBD executive, Lizande Botha, “BBD was able to evaluate the client’s needs and create a bespoke reporting platform to automate their regulatory reporting process”.

From here, we leverage our team of experts to implement the solution, using best-fit methodologies depending on the client environment, giving them the room to perform at their best, entrusting them to make the decisions in their areas of expertise, while still maintaining open communication. We keep you and other relevant players in the feedback loop, to ensure our teams stay the course and never lose sight of the business outcomes they’re aiming for, while being adaptive to changes needed. For us, it’s not about selling potential, it’s about being guided by clients’ unique needs and objectives, allowing that to shape the solutions created. “BBD looks to how they can partner with their clients to realise their digital ambitions today and in the long-run” adds van Niekerk.

If you’re wondering what’s possible with technology, with us the possibilities are endless.

Get in touch today to find out how BBD can bridge the gap to turn potential into reality for your business.