Smile: Your company is in beta

By: Alessandro Vigilante - 29/05/2014

Alessandro Vigilante (Ale) runs Business Development & Strategy for Colt’s Voice business. He is tasked with identifying, assessing and executing inorganic cash uplift opportunities, from disruptive products and innovative commercial offers through to M&A; deals. He is a so-called Growth Engineer, with brainstorm-to-cash experience in taking product portfolios and sales channels through digital transformation. He holds a Master of Industrial Engineering and an MBA. Catch up with Ale’s latest views at https://twitter.com/@alebyday.

  • Like this
  • Close

A message has become particularly common on our mobile screens: ‘update available’. Regardless of the mobile device or operating system being used, users are regularly offered to upgrade their applications for enhanced features. Even if the feature has already been tested by millions of users, its development never ends. This state of continuous progression in which the product is being constantly renewed, now also applies to companies. Welcome to companies in beta! 

The beta concept comes from the software world, where new products are often launched before they are commercially ready. A beta development tends to be fully functional, but might still contain some bugs. The users in this phase are piloting the product and expected to report errors so these can be corrected.

Now, we have become used to the beta phase, which has become the ultimate goal of the company that regularly redefines itself. This has started in the Microsoft environment of regular updates, but mobile applications have taught us that a product can be available that is not completely finished, but meets the needs of a certain number of users. This philosophy is moving successfully into the world of business.

The concept of permanent beta has been implemented following the lean manufacturing and lean startup concepts, which advocate that a company does not require large investments and doesn’t need to launch a perfect product.  The product is developed in dialogue with the customer, so it can reflect their experience and preferences.
 
Requirements for a beta enterprise:

Being a lean or beta enterprise is not easy. Not all companies have the agility required, in particular the management of the company.  It is hard to commit to permanent change and ongoing testing when companies are used to a more traditional management model. A few aspects should be considered:

  • A scalable infrastructure is required. The beta company should be able to evolve with customers, and it also needs the ability to scale its services (storage, bandwidth, etc.). It is certainly not the same to manage an online shop with a few dozen customers visiting simultaneously as one with hundreds or thousands of customers at the same time.  And the same goes for downloading files or applications.
  • A collaborative work environments in the cloud should be available. The flexible company should focus on the essentials, and increasingly this means how not where: replace the traditional office with the virtual office; the unauthorized access to local networks  with online work environments, accessible from anywhere; and complex systems based on proprietary technologies and communications should give way to open and agile systems operating over IP, facilitating group work.
  • Security is not an option. If the lean company sees the user as part of the development of the product or service, it needs to provide stable, secure, open spaces free of downtime, unauthorized access or compromised access due to non-encrypted communication gateways.

None of this is something available only to large organisations. The cloud enables economies of scale that give the best service to each enterprise tailored to their needs, with the ability to scale up and down almost immediately. This provides enterprises with the ideal conditions to embrace the beta philosophy.  In a way, all of us that embrace innovation at the heart of everything we do, have already started this journey.


No comments on 'Smile: Your company is in beta
'
Be the first to comment


Add your comment
Close

Terms and Conditions Submit

Please choose your country