Cbeyond ( NASDAQ: CBEY) is a technology firm delivering cloud services, communication services, web hosting and back up & security services to small and medium sized businesses. Founded in the year 1999, headquartered in Atlanta, GA, the company has a market cap of $217.51 million.

The IT industry has been going through the era of digitalization. According to the research firm Gartner, this trend has evolved and many industries like manufacturing, healthcare and others have adapted to this evolution as the products and services they offer increasingly go digital. Another major development is that the cost of IT experimentation is going down drastically. Take startups in the Business Intelligence or SaaS for accounting fields setting up business for the first time, for instance. For them the total cost to set up their entire technology infrastructure to boost their enterprise model has been declining over the last few years. As the cost of IT experimentation continues to go down, the rate of innovation goes up substantially.

Integration - a "Problem" or a "Service offered"?

Interoperability has been a "promise undelivered" for a long time now. A buyer of IT services who purchases a lot of SaaS and commercial products as well as custom built applications has to come up with growth-driving strategies after a thorough contemplation of what is necessary. As an example, the shift from mainframes to client servers to distributed web has also resulted in many companies of average size running 30 to 40 unique systems! As all these systems do not interoperate very well, organizations are compelled to continuously invest and integrate both in terms of money and time, in order to provide cohesive services to customers and internal stakeholders alike. The other face of the coin is that big players like IBM and Oracle generate a large part of their revenue through integration and maintenance, so this also plays a role in their level of interest in solving the problem.

Another major challenge is preventing people from optimizing in a silo. Trying to effectively make the best use of the IT organization at the cost of the overall objectives of the company for instance, may not be following what is truly required for the ultimate success of the company. Another option would be to put oneself in the shoes of the CIO (or the CEO) and exercise a conscious approach through driving collaborations and cross-functional thinking serving the best interests of the company.

Seeing off Old Business Models

In tearing down obsolete business and operating models, old organizational structures which may very well have been successful in the past many no longer be suitable for present and future organizational needs. This is very important and also presents a significant challenge that must be dealt with. For example, at Cbeyond we recently went through a business transformation process that changed us from being organized around products and services from what was primarily a single product line, to being organized into three different business units with unique focus on addressing the varying needs of three different customer segments. To align with that the change we reorganized the IT organization to have work streams embedded within the business units, all in a span of just three months, earlier this year.

Finding and Managing Talent Internally

Yet another challenge is managing the discrete talent that exists across the entire organization, and harnessing that large pool of talent regardless of role or business segment. Be it IT, finance or marketing, top talent is always hard to come by and all efforts must be made to work towards the retention of such talent.

Innovation is critical to the success of any business. Creating space and opportunities for ideas to collide, be shared and executed upon just has to be on the radar. At Cbeyond, we have created our own IT workspace called the "Innovation Station". It incorporates all the elements which make people want to come there have conversations, throw out creative ideas, generate white board ideas, flip up presentations and thereby collaborate in a way that brings out innovations in a much more organic manner. The key to all of these initiatives is to find the top technology talent from various parts of the business, allow them to work in a collaborative manner, and equip them with ample information and research on the latest trends and technologies. We draw out the best views from each talent by asking them to craft the top two or top three innovative ideas the company should pursue as part of a key approach to improve the company's market position.

Technology should be Driven by Business Purpose

People are smitten by companies like Google, Facebook and various other social media companies who encourage their staff to engage with one another and to continuously share their ideas and views. Ultimately, technology without a business purpose is not very interesting. Every evolution and discovery in technology should carry with it the legacy of having walked in the shoes of the user.

(As told to Durgesh Prakash)