Challenges In Scaling Advanced Industrial Solutions
- 3 minsThis article is inspired by the classic HBR article, Meeting the Challenge of Disruptive Change, and reflects on my failure to scale advanced solutions within the SCADA/EMS product. The HBR article helped me find answers to some questions. Here are some results of my reflection and the lessons learned.
The rise and the fall
The market for industrial software products like SCADA and EMS is very competitive. It includes major global players as well as numerous local market leaders and challengers. This “red ocean” market environment forces you to find new solutions and products to enhance your proposition and differentiate from competitors. One of my tasks was to build such solutions and integrate them into SCADA/EMS.
The idea of developing additional solutions was actively supported by the founders, and we established several activities around it:
- Brainstorming meetings
- Market research
- Conducting R&D and building PoCs
- Hosting webinars
Two years of hard work resulted in two new solutions: a digital twin of the power grid tightly integrated with SCADA/EMS and server-side calculations of water steam properties. Many other ideas and PoCs were denied during the evaluation phases. We successfully sold a few of them, increasing company revenue and profit, and gaining new anchor clients.
But then it suddenly collapsed. The sales team stopped communicating with customers about the solutions, and the internal knowledge sharing and education process was frozen. I was left alone with the task of commissioning the already sold modules to customers. My requests for new human resources were continuously rejected for six months. Long story short, I completed some of the most essential work by myself, burned out, and quit.
Lessons learned
What happened? Why were successful solutions no longer actively distributed internally and externally? Here, I omit the details and intermediate conclusions and provide the root causes:
- The company’s core values and established processes did not focus on advanced solutions, R&D, and PoCs.
- Declared desires and words cannot change the values and processes of an established business.
- A single person’s passion can achieve a lot, but when it ends, the results dissipate.
The mentioned HBR article states that if the values and processes of an established business are not aligned with the required innovations, then a separate department or even a new company should be created. This new unit should develop the values and establish the processes needed to achieve goals, and produce and deliver innovations and new solutions end-to-end.
The existing business was built around the values of classic sales and unhurried communication, standard B2B marketing, and processes targeted at operational efficiency. It was thriving and continues to operate effectively, as far as I know. Our desire to build additional modules was an alien to this environment. There was no way for them to be accepted and work in symbiosis.
In my case, what needed to be done to ensure results for many years after the idea was announced:
- Create a completely new unit.
- Hire talented and motivated staff with a passion for innovations in industrials and energy.
- Establish processes for building R&D and PoC within the unit.
- Establish values of continuous research, growing domain knowledge, tight communication with customers, and a strong desire for incredible customer results.
- Establish immunity of the unit to high research costs and long intervals of development without concrete results.
The outcome would be the same: contracts signed, revenue and profit growth, solutions provided, and differentiation of offers. However, the momentum would be stronger and more stable. After that challenging experience, I started a new role at a different company whose values and processes align with innovation goals. All these aspects work well there, and I have proven my vision many times.
Dmitry Bogdanov
Industrial IoT and AI lead