High-Tech Computing—Data Strategy

monitor computing

Summary

A leading high-tech company was transitioning from being a hardware and device company to offering software and services.

Silicon Valley Data Science developed a data strategy, giving the company a clear roadmap to build new software and applications.

Background and Business Problem

SVDS was engaged by a prominent, high-tech hardware company specializing in mobile solutions. Our client has a strong position in the market, in part due to the strategic acquisitions that have expanded their portfolio across different industry verticals.

The resulting organization included multiple, independently-operating business units. While each of these business units enjoyed a consistent market position, both revenue growth and profit margin had declined in the increasingly competitive and commoditized high-tech industry. As a result, our client recognized the need to transition from only providing hardware to becoming a software and solutions-oriented company, based on a foundation of tighter integration across the business units and data generated from their technology.

Our client wanted to create intelligent environments to give their customers a view across their network of devices and assets, and allow their customers to act on the insights that wider perspective provided. This would allow them to realize the transition from a hardware to a software and solutions company. To truly benefit from this ability, they had to identify how data could support these ambitions, and use that lens to build a clear path to launching the software business quickly, and have it generating revenue as soon as possible.

Solution

SVDS conducted an eight-week data strategy project, tightly focused on building the foundation for new data-driven products and services that could span the client’s business units. Working with the general managers from each business unit, we captured the leading business objectives, including their go-to-market strategies in each of the vertical industries they served. After gaining consensus on prioritization with the corporate strategy and marketing teams, the SVDS team worked with the client’s IT leaders to identify a common data platform and cloud strategy that could be deployed holistically across these groups.

At the intersection of business objectives, data, and technology patterns of reuse, we developed roadmaps for new data product offerings that could be built out incrementally, while remaining anchored on continually creating value for the business. The data strategy we delivered included a prioritized roadmap of concrete projects and implementation plans that integrated with the go-to-market plans for their highest-value industries—which could be initiated immediately.

SVDS also provided recommendations on key investments necessary to successfully execute their data strategy, including a more coordinated approach to solution selling across technology and business units, the need to centralize data talent to support the business units effectively, and a consistent strategy for data capture, ecosystem development, and partnerships.

After a review with the CEO, the company created a new software business unit with the sole purpose of implementing the data strategy and developing software and services to bring to bear across all the company’s industries.

data strategy

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