“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said ‘faster horses.'” 
Henry Ford, Founder, Ford Motor Company

Worldwide, the speed of innovation is being driven by two key factors: the growth of technical capability and the proliferation of consumer demands. As consumers discover new possibilities, they naturally begin to expand their wish-lists. However, as Henry Ford knew, customers aren’t always able to predict what they might actually want. So it's up to us as service providers not only to respond to what customers say they want, but to anticipate what they would want if they only knew they could have it.

At TIMG, the opportunities we have to innovate are boundless. Every time we innovate, we can potentially bring a service to market that has never existed before. Now, being first to market can be crucially important. In fact, according to Al Ries and Jack Trout, authors of the marketing classic The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, being first is paramount. "Getting into the mind first is always easier than convincing a prospect you have a better product than the one that did get there first,” they say.

And yet it’s also true that companies can successfully improve their way to leadership, in line with the maxim "First we will be best, and then we will be first." Opportunities to be better are everywhere, and one product or service’s flaws are often the smart competitor’s happy hunting grounds. In large part, TIMG itself has grown in exactly this way.

But whichever way you innovate, you can only succeed in the long term by keeping an unrelenting focus on providing tangible benefits to your customers. And that’s where TIMG’s focus has always been. We innovate simply to serve our customers better, whether that’s by being the first to offer them new solutions or by bringing them solutions that are clearly superior to what they already have on offer.

At its heart, our innovation strategy is one of enlightened self-interest: we know that if we don’t make life easier for our customers, someone else will.

We’re determined to make sure that that someone is us.

Last month, TIMG’s eBusiness Manager Tineke Craig attended a Gartner Business Intelligence & Analytics Summit in Texas, USA. Here’s a chunked-down version of what she encountered there.

Businesses of all types and in all locations around the world are being challenged by disruptive technologies. But the anxiety that disruption generates often masks the central factor that makes disruption possible, the factor at the heart of all successful business activity: the client. In every industry that has been or is being disrupted, the incumbents are simply being bested by newcomers who have found ways to build better relationships with their clients. It isn’t technology that’s disrupting industry: it’s the clients.

Clients are not a right: they are a privilege that a company has to earn over and over again. Many a disrupted company seems to have forgotten this elementary fact. Rather than let clients disrupt them by switching to an innovative competitor, companies would be better advised to disrupt themselves. Doing that requires a wholehearted embrace of innovation and adaptability as modes of corporate being. It also requires a steely eye on what clients actually need.

And yet there’s an apparent contradiction here. Organisations need to adapt to what clients need even while client needs are changing. At the same time, clients can be wary of or resistant to change, as well as to the pace of it. Sometimes this is a function of the age of clients, who are increasingly required to embrace technologies that they don’t necessarily understand.

Despite the contradictions and anxieties, however, companies must press ahead. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, “…this kind of transition will not occur in an overnight big bang. The process must be deliberate, modular, planned, and built into an aggressive timeline.”[1]

Aggressive timelines are indeed the order of the day. Disruptive implementation relies on nimble teams with big ideas who can execute quickly. It’s critical for companies to ensure that they have the right people at the table internally: being challenged is one thing, but challenges should not be allowed to become roadblocks. Teams need to be empowered to take risks and to “hold the vision.” This means that, sometimes, the ideas people must be separated from the process people so that the “what” can grow without being pre-emptively stymied by the “how”. All the while, a clear and steady emphasis must be placed on speed to market and ‘least viable product’ thinking that can loop back and iterate improvements quickly by incorporating real client feedback.

The ultimate challenge of self-disruption is to get solutions to market profitably. Above all, don’t get comfortable. And don’t be afraid: remember your childlike curiosity.

But do get moving. Because if you don’t, you’ll probably get disrupted.

By your clients.

[1] http://hpe-enterpriseforward.com/eiu-pace-of-disruption/

As a company at the often chaotic forefront of change, TIMG has become adept at managing the internal tensions that come with innovating within today’s disruptive economy. In the process, TIMG has defined itself as a business that continually disrupts itself in order to generate greater value for its customers. The key to this effort has been TIMG’s IT team.

Although TIMG was founded in the predominantly physical world of data tape storage, information technology has underpinned its success from the start. At the centre of TIMG’s quest to innovate meaningfully for its customers is our IT team. The IT team has emerged as the key force driving TIMG’s strategic growth, and plays a pivotal role in capturing competitive advantage. To keep doing this effectively, the IT team must lead and manage the expectations of multiple stakeholders within the business.

Achieving this, however, is no easy feat. Even within itself, the team must absorb the transient imbalances that always accompany new demands and developments. Consequently, the team’s capability grows along with developers who constantly push the digital envelope, while support staff maintain stability and dependability throughout TIMG’s web of business systems. The IT team’s challenges are not merely local, either. TIMG’s IT resources are distributed geographically, temporally, and culturally. Vast distances and differences in time zones add extra levels of complexity to the IT team’s balancing act. And yet, somehow the entire IT team manages to keep conceiving and delivering TIMG’s innovative new products.

The inevitable tensions that arise from competing priorities within the business are, however, ultimately forces for good. They combine to drive the business to develop better systems for bringing leaner, smarter, and better products to market faster.

The proof? Recent successes—including TIMG’s Verification of Identity (VOI) and Kiosk products—have validated TIMG’s strategic direction. Along the way to each success, development and integration issues become opportunities to drive greater learning and flexibility throughout the entire business. This means that every advance made by the IT team helps the entire TIMG business to grow in capability and agility.

This upside for the business is considerable. And while TIMG’s successes have clearly required an all-of-business approach to innovation and efficiency, the importance of leadership remains central. Didier Bonnet, Capgemini’s leader of digital transformation, says that leadership is ultimately what transforms digital investments into digital advantages. “There needs to be a fusion of IT and business to vision, to governance, to engagement. Digital maturity combines digital capability and leadership capability," he said.[2]

Bonnet’s sentiments are endorsed by TIMG’s IT Business Manager Richard Williams, for whom internal collaboration continues to be a key focus. Richard says, "Everyone brings a different perspective to the development of new products. But in the end, to be able to achieve what we’ve achieved, it's all been about coordination and collaboration. And we’re having to get better at that all the time."

In response to the ever-increasing competitive and technological pressures, TIMG’s capabilities are being extended and enhanced by the constant dedication and learning of the IT team. Long the engine of the company’s success, the IT team continues to pave the way for TIMG’s expansion with its current range of innovative new digital products.

[2]http://www.arnnet.com.au/article/596475/digital-disruption-2016-transformation-must-combine-digital-capability-leadership-capability-says-capgemini/

Last month, we introduced PaperLite MD, our innovative solution for patient forms. This month, we dive a little deeper…

Patient care is a healthcare professional’s primary responsibility. Key to the quality of this care is time. But with diagnosis and prescription comes paperwork. It’s not unusual for healthcare professionals to spend 1 to 2 hours every day simply filling out forms for each patient. For practitioners with chronically heavy workloads, this is a very costly use of time. Worse, it can easily result in other patients having to wait longer than necessary before they can be seen.

For TIMG, this seemed to be an information management problem that could be solved simply. Most of the information required on any form already exists in a practice’s administration software. Several forms might be required for any one patient, and might require the same information to be entered multiple times. In addition, this information must often be entered into completely separate software platforms. What TIMG did was design a bridge that links all these systems together: PaperLite MD.

PaperLite MD is a productivity tool that dramatically reduces the time it takes to complete internal and third party forms.

Essentially, it links a patient’s information to all the forms that they need to have filled. PaperLite MD integrates with medical software—such as the Doctors Control Panel—that in turn links directly to practice software such as Medical Director, Best Practice, and Medinet.

Forms are stored in the PaperLite MD library, with more frequently used forms saved in a Favourites folder. Whenever a form is selected, PaperLite MD automatically populates it when the patient’s record is opened from within the practice software and highlights any blank fields for further input or review. Once a form is completed, PaperLite MD allows it to be signed electronically or printed for physical signature. PaperLite MD saves a copy of the form as a PDF, and then sends it securely via the Healthlink service directly into the patient record.

In around a minute or so—a fraction of the usual time—PaperLite MD gives the healthcare practitioner a completed form and, most importantly, more time to attend to their patients.

For more information about PaperLite MD, contact TIMG on 1800 464 360 or email ebusiness@timg.com.

At one of its Signature Series sessions earlier this year, IT research and advisory firm Gartner revealed its top strategic predictions for 2016[3]. The predictions lay out the implications of the fast-evolving digital world in which we find ourselves, an algorithmic- and smart-machine-driven world in which a new and harmonious set of relationships must be negotiated between humans and machines.

Gartner’s predictions begin to separate us from the mere notion of technology adoption and draw us more into issues surrounding what it means to be human in a digital world. They will have deep implications for what it means to be human in a world increasingly modified and managed by machines.

Here are their predictions in brief:

1. By 2018, 20% of business content will be authored by machines.
2. By 2018, 6 billion connected things will be requesting support.
3. By 2020, autonomous software agents outside of human control will participate in 5% of all economic transactions.
4. By 2018, more than 3 million workers globally will be supervised by a "robo-boss."
5. By year-end 2018, 20% of smart buildings will have suffered from digital vandalism.
6. By 2018, 45% of the fastest-growing companies will have fewer employees than instances of smart machines.
7. By year-end 2018, customer digital assistants will recognise individuals by face and voice across channels and partners.
8. By 2018, 2 million employees will be required to wear health and fitness tracking devices as a condition of employment.
9. By 2020, smart agents will facilitate 40% of mobile interactions, and the post-app era will begin to dominate.
10. Through 2020, 95% of cloud security failures will be the customer's fault.

[3] http://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/gartner-predicts-our-digital-future/

TIMG’s Service Representatives, or SRs, are the backbone of every TIMG office and the face of TIMG to many of our clients. Franco Alfonzo, one of our longest serving SRs, joins us this month to talk about his time at TIMG.

Q: Tell us a bit about yourself.

I grew up in Bronte, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. That’s where I met my wife, Teresa. After we married we moved to Marsfield, where we’ve been for almost 14 years. We have twin boys, Matthew and Marc. And no, we’re not planning more twins called Luke and John!

Q: What attracted you to TIMG initially?

I remember that the job ad was for a position as a driver, and I was really keen for that kind of role. I’d been working with my brother-in-law as a tiler, but I wanted something different. I was looking forward to interacting with workmates and clients, the people side of things. And at TIMG, our clients aren’t just clients, they become friends. We can have a chat if we meet on the street, people don’t just wave their hands and walk off.

Q: How has TIMG changed over the years?

Altogether, I’ve worked for TIMG for about 10 years.

After 10 years, things are kind of different but also kind of the same. It’s the same because it’s the same type of work. But it’s different because there are more and different staff, and because the company has evolved. For example, our PDAs and other tools just keep getting better and better.

Q: What do you enjoy most about TIMG?

The most enjoyable thing is working with great colleagues in a great work environment. The team is fun, the people are happy, and while we keep the serious part of work top-of-mind, we can all have a laugh.

Q: How do you like to spend your time off?

That’s easy! I love spending time with my family, with my wife and kids. And I love my rugby league: I’ve always been an Eels supporter, so I hope they sort their issues out soon!

Q: If you could be a sportsman, who would you be and why?

I’d be former Parramatta star Nathan Hindmarsh. Why? Because he’s a good solid guy, a hard worker who sweated blood for his team for many years.

Contact your local TIMG office on 1300 764 954 for a complimentary review of your information management systems.

While every effort has been made by TIMG to ensure that the information contained in this newsletter is up to date and accurate, TIMG does not give any guarantees, undertakings or warranties in relation to the accuracy completeness and up to date status of the above information. TIMG will not be liable for any loss or damage suffered by any person arising out of the reliance of any information in this newsletter.