Technology

The rate at which the human genome was sequenced would not have been possible without creative software and advanced server and storage farms to analyze and store the results. The Boeing 787 used Computer Aided Engineering integrated applications that allowed the wing to be designed and manufactured in Japan, engines sourced from the UK, accept Korean made wing tips, not to mentioned the myriad of other 3rd party contractors who worked on the complexities of such an aircraft.

All of this was made possible by advanced and integrated Information Technology.

Our Focus
Our Perspective
Client Results

Tab Content One

Vaxa's technology clients represent some of the world's leaders in computer hardware and software, IT Services, semiconductors, and peripherals such as storage and printers. These companies are in the Fortune 50, six of the top ten software manufacturers, the top brand names in storage, leaders in security, and pioneers in semicondcutors.

We collaborate with teams from Corporate Strategy, the Product and Brand groups, Marketing, Market Intelligence, and R&D—all with an intent to:

Identifying promising new growth opportunities by analysing market attributes such as emerging trends, geographic attractiveness, and industry discontinuities.
Helping Business Units, whose growth has stagnated, to look for adjacencies that can leverage existing capabilities and assets to create new value propositions.
Boosting sales channel revenues and performance by strengthening the Partner Business Model. Often, modifying the current channels ecosystem to align it with new and emerging opportunities.
Working with emerging business to help them accelerate their trajectory by scaling their business model either organically and/or together with an ecosystem of alliances.
Teaming our clients with Private Equity companies to gain visibility to the critical generation companies who are creating new e-commerce models, fresh approaches to Big Data and Analytics, and new solutions for key industries.

Vaxa's true and innate value to Technology companies is to help them see issues from angles that may not have been previously considered and create depth and added dimensions to our foresight so that the end strategies, go-to-market options, and tactics become differentiated.

Our client results speak volumes—for example, according to Fortune Magazine, one our clients added $4B in less four years from one of our projects. For a leading software, they launched a wholly new channels ecosystem for enterprise software in less than eighteen months.

Tab Content Two

A great deal has been written about Big Data. But the issue still remains that industries such healthcare, insurance, and retail still do not know how much of a gold mine they have nor do technology companies have figured out how to help these and other data-intense industries to structure themselves to start using data as one means to make a clearer path on increasing the customer experience, surfacing new insights into product development, or driving new forms of internal and/or external collaboration.

This implies that for Big Data to have a hope in delivering all it promises, three things need to happen:

Companies need to recognize the value of their data and how to create the organizational structure to mine it.
Technology companies need to build a deep understanding of how that data can positively impact differ parts of the business—from quality of products, elevating the customer experience, to boosting organizational insights and productivity.
Both sides need to realize that data, unlikely other assets, cannot be approached with a one size fits all mentality and will often require highly custom solutions with an intent to future use.

GETTING ORGANIZED

Like all else that is important to future health, companies need a cohesive strategy for collecting and organizing data, having a clear an idea as possible what they want to get out of the data, and how it will be used to identify and create value for the organization. In a recent Vaxa survey, 62% of companies said they didn't have a right systems and processes to collect data, a surprising 71% said they were unclear on what data they should be collecting, and 65% didn't have the right technology to store and retrieve data in a meaningful way.

Inherent in a good data policy is identifying the relevant data sources—not just what is place today but also what other data will be needed to increase performance. For example, there are at least two places where customer constantly interact with a company—the website with emails and chat and call centers. Many customers will tell you what is wrong and often will have suggestions on how to fix a problem. The ability to capture this data, store and organize it, can become a rich source of not only improving how customers experience the company but comoetitive advantage for product and service improvement.

Knowing what to collect, how to store, retrieve and mine is not always as obvious as it sounds. A company needs to understand its business, where it is headed, and what is needed to chart a course—the basics of strategy. But how data fits into that strategy maybe less clear. One way to overcome that speed bump is to look to non-competitive or industries that are outside of your own to see how they tackled the issue. That is, take an outside-in approach as one way to chart the course and minimize mis-steps.

BUILD, BUY, BORROW, OR RENT

Another strategic issue senior executives have to grapple with is the investments construct of technologies to pull data together and the creation of the advanced analytical models and tools. Most companies' core business is not about creating technologies but are mainly users of it. There are numerous external vendors—both established and emerging— that provide the full range of analytical assets from complementary core data, models, and tools that management has to decide the best investment strategy that is advantageous in the long run. That is, what are the make vs. buy vs. partner vs. a combination? How does the change over time?

The investment and deplyment strategies have varied widely in the retail sector. For instance, some retailers have decided to build deep analytical capabilities while others have established long term partnerships with selected vendors. These choices of on-line and traditional brick and mortar companies reflect a dynamic set of strategic, financial, and organization drivers that can only be addressed by top management.

GETTING CLOSER TO THE CLIENT BUSINESS

The medical device industry is one that seem to perennially deliver solutions that are closely matched with doing what is needed to diagnose and treat patients. They do this by creating a deep understanding of their customer needs, wants, and pain points. Sometimes, even understanding their customer's business better than the customers themselves.

Technology companies, particularly those offering big data solutions should look to the medical device and similar industries to see how to convert technology into meaningful usable big data solutions. The issue related to big data is very different to other forms of information technology. Servers, storage, and operating systems can be designed and scaled across a range of application envrionments whereas, data analytics vary tremendously, even when the problem is common, the insights and approaches are vary even customers are within the same industry.

For example, five sectors represent about just under 40% of global GDP—healthcare, public sector, retail, manufacturing, and telecommunications. According to the OECD, healthcare by itself can increase its efficiency by nearly $750B and it is an area where there are major information disconnects between consumers, providers, and payors.

The healthcare systems in the United States and other countries have shown some success in leveraging big data. With rising costs, US providers have implemented a range of pilot programs with good results to date:

The Department of Veterans Affairs in the US has success shown health information technology or HIT in areas such as patient monitoring. The VA has outperformed the private sector by following recommended procedures for patient care, adhering to guidelines, increasing their rates of edvidence-based drug therapies.
The UK's National Institute for Health and Clinical Experience has pioneered the use of large datasets to investigate the clinical and cost effectiveness of new drugs and expensive pre-existing treatments. They issue guidelines on such costs for the NHS and will often negotiate prices and market access conditions for PMP industries.
The Italian Medicines Agency collects and analyzes clinical data on the experience of expensive drugs as part of a national cost effectiveness program. The agency can impose "conditional reimbursement" status on new drugs and can then reevaluate prices and market access conditions relative to its data studies.

The key for big data solutions is understanding the broader goals and how the overall business enviornment must change and then creating a path or series of initiatives that will contribute to a future state. As in the case of healthcare, it about controlling cost, providing easier access, and ensuring the right care is delivered at the right time and place.

Tab Content Three

Our Technology clients include companies from different segments—from those in the Fortune 100, small and medium businesses, and companies whose revenue mix varies with hardware, software, services, and integrated solutions.

Our client sponsors range from Board Members to Executives in Corporate and Business Unit Strategy, Sales & Marketing, and Research & Development.

The Future of Outsourcing

Our client, a Fortune 100 Technology company, provides integrated IT solutions to enterprises, small and medium businesss, governments, and academia. Their services growth has come under pressure especially in outsourcing. They have seen that companies have been gradually changing their attitude toward outsourcing and Vaxa was asked identify the drivers behind the changing sentiments toward outsourcing, the trade-offs companies are making between operating risks and economics, and whether the competitive tides of outsourcing likely to changing toward insourcing?

Our approach was to design an approach that engaged with senior executives of companies in industries who were existing customers and those who had potential to become future customers of outsourcing. We developed a short list of key questions that we wanted to explore and brought together IT and non-IT executives together with our client teams so new insights can be created from the open dialogue. These were a series of 2-3 days exploratory workshops. In parallel, Vaxa created a market attractiveness analytical model that integrated economic trends and use the work outcomes to to develop a set of assumptions that estimated the future market across selected industries for outsourcing.

This analysis also highlighted which industries and customers are least-to-most attractive and the capabilities that will be needed to be successful.

The end result was a strategy that reconfigured part of our client capabilities to focus on specific opportunity domains, a set of corporate development activities aimed at closing their capabilities gap, a short term portfolio of go to market options and tactics and allowed for immediate action will continue the growth of their outsourcing business, and a direction that all key stakeholders bought in to.

Vaxa's work with the Technology Sector has help our clients to identify over $70B of new opportunities which generated over $10B in incremental revenues.

Technology

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