It’s 2019! Don’t panic!

I hope you were able to spend at least some of the year-end disconnected from the Interwebs and come back to work energized about the year ahead.

One thing I noticed in own my reentry is the number of lists urging us all to adopt the technologies that will change our lives this year. Whether it’s AR/VR, blockchain, cloud everything, the intersection of CAD and physical modeling, simulating complex systems, PLM, IoT-enabling every physical device you can lay your hands on — and then create virtual sensors, too … it’s enough to make me crawl back into my cave, pull the covers over my head and wish it all away. But that’s not really possible, so here are a couple of coping strategies:

First, don’t panic. Remember that this happens every year and is intended to induce FOMO, the Fear of Missing Out. The fear is that, by not jumping on these technologies RIGHT NOW, you’ll be left in the dust while your competitors jump out ahead, scoop up all of the customers and leave you behind, sad and alone. Rubbish.

Technology exists to serve you. If you can’t make a sound, calmly reasoned business case, it’s not for you. Or at least not yet.

But do pay attention to the lists, just not as breathlessly as their creators would like. Start thinking about where these tools might be useful to your business. What problem do you have, that one of these tools could help address?

If you can, create a role in your organization (or set aside some time each week for you to do this) to keep track of these lists and trends and winnow through to find something that’s useful to you. It’s a watching brief –look and listen– until there are proof of concept case studies that show how someone like you implemented this technology and saw a positive return on investment. Only then think about a pilot project in your organization.

That’s for the cautious, incremental types among us (like me). Others look at technology as a way to radically change their organizations. Remember around Y2K? ERP implementations were everywhere, and one of the main reasons was to impose order and systematize accounting, HR and compliance processes across organizations. The benefits of the technology mattered, of course, but the real reason for the implementation was often organizational change. If you want to change your business and the people in it, some of the technologies on the 2019 lists could certainly be a driver.

Just one example. Say you want to create a service protocol that relies on virtual reality in the office and augmented reality in the field. You want your technicians to learn what to do in the office, where there’s time and conditions are safe. Then, in the field, they need to be efficient and thorough. How would you do that? Work backwards: the tech needs real-time access to the data about the specific device she’s repairing, based on the service call placed by the customer and any past maintenance records. How might you gather, sanitize, organize and serve out that data? She might also need real-time access (by voice or video) to an expert in the office. How can you provide that? She grabbed the spare parts she thought she needed; turns out the service call mis-stated the problem and she’s needs gear she didn’t bring. How can you provide access to spare parts info for unanticipated parts? And so on.

This sounds simple –just digitize the manual, right?– but it’s actually very very hard. Just making sure the tech knows that this is model XYZ, with scheduled upgrades from 2017 and 2015 and retrofit 12 is a major data challenge. Getting to this level of IT-driven field service is a game-changer for many organizations. But SO worthwhile: the tech will be a hero in the eyes of the client, she’ll be more efficient and can do more calls per day, the organization may be able to better manage spares inventory and how it batches the repair calls, and so on. Better customer relationships, saving money, perhaps a new business opportunity… What’s not to love? But easy, no.

Scoping down from the MUST DO RIGHT NOW lists of general-purpose technologies is the only way to stay sane and get excited about the true potential of what’s out there right now (or on the near horizon). Can you tell I’m pumped? Wish I had gear out there that needed servicing …

Happy New Year to you and yours. It’s going to be a good one!

Image is by Leandro Neumann Ciuffo [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons