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In a constantly changing world, businesses must stay adaptable by performing periodic strategic analyses. Through this process, company leaders can review historical data to not only inform their long-term strategy but identify the technology solutions to stay ahead of the curve.
The September 2022 episode of the Arizona Technology Council’s AZTechCast podcast featured experts including Julie Gable, CEO and founder of BusinessWhys; Bob Interdonato, general manager at Lumen; and Melati Lee-Parker, founder and CEO of Macroscope Studios. These leaders joined Karen Nowicki, president and owner of Phoenix Business RadioX, and Bianca Buliga, director of marketing and communications at the Arizona Technology Council, in discussing how to successfully conduct strategic business analysis and prepare for an unpredictable business environment.
Throughout this hour-long episode, the panel of three experts convened at the Phoenix Business RadioX studio at MAC6 in Tempe to define what strategic business analysis looks like and explain why it’s important for companies of all sizes to get familiar with, particularly in today’s day and age. Although they all play a direct role in helping companies determine how to use technology to stay future-proof, each one has a distinct theory of change that set them apart from the others.
As the CEO and founder of BusinessWhys, Julie brings over 20 years of IT and business consulting experience to the table. She is passionate about innovative and accountable problem solving, which inspired her to start her company and help companies drive meaningful and sustained traction toward their goals. BusinessWhys specifically focuses on helping their clients, which range from startups to Fortune 100 companies, to leverage industry-leading frameworks and relentlessly focus on the WHY to drive return on investment (ROI). Throughout the conversation, Julie really emphasized two key points: 1) collect clean data to inform your company’s leadership-level decision-making process and 2) truly assess and understand your team’s core competencies before deciding to build custom solutions internally or buying something off the shelf. Julie’s level-headed approach to strategic planning is really focused on listening to data, not overstretching your team beyond their proven skill sets and asking “why?” at every step to stay in tune with your company’s intentions.
After many years at Lumen, a multinational technology company that enables companies to capitalize on emerging applications and power the fourth Industrial Revolution, Bob has adopted a more technology-forward mindset. He stressed that the fourth Industrial Revolution is redefining how we live and work, creating an unprecedented need for an advanced application delivery architecture that is designed to handle the complex and data-intensive workloads of next-generation technology and businesses. In his day-to-day job, Bob works with companies from Arizona to Nevada to help them navigate their challenges using the Lumen Platform of Adaptive Networking, Edge Computing, Connected Security and Collaboration Services. He feels passionately about helping these companies reimagine how they do business, and steps in from strategy to implementation. Bob emphasized that big data and artificial intelligence are critical components to automating data collection, allowing for easier and faster synthesis and decision making.
Macroscope Studios, on the other hand, focuses more on in-person convening to move the needle on strategic planning. As the founder and CEO, Melati partners with companies and teams to host, facilitate and produce business retreats and off-sites that are engineered with kindness and focused on value. Melati loves creating simple tools for herself and for those around her – in fact, she originally started doing this to make her life as a financial and actuarial analyst easier. Over the years, she has refined this passion into premium facilitation, IT product design and development consulting and product management. As a trained pilot, Melati re-emphasized the importance of good data in getting business leaders on the same page before moving forward with a big decision – even a small error can land a pilot in a totally different destination if not calculated correctly.
Though all three speakers came to the conversation with different perspectives, they all agreed that strategic planning is conducted most optimally if employees of all levels from all different departments are included in the process – leadership can find themselves in a silo if they’re not intentionally seeking input from outside of the C-suite. Finally, they urged businesses small and large to think through a realistic cadence for performing regular strategic business analyses – it’s never too late to get ahead of the curve in an unpredictable business environment.
Watch the replay below for more insight on this engaging conversation!
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JULIE GABLE |
BOB INTERDONATO |
MELATI LEE-PARKER |
About AZTechCast
The official podcast of the Arizona Technology Council, AZTechCast is dedicated to covering innovation and technology in Arizona and beyond. Through the art of the connected conversation, AZ TechCast’s hosts and guests share success stories, tech news and analysis about the region’s leading startups, companies and emerging technologies, as well as the latest industry trends and critical issues propelling Arizona’s growing technology ecosystem. Visit www.aztechcouncil.org/techcast to learn more or to listen to recent episodes.
About Phoenix Business RadioX
Karen Nowicki is the owner and president of Phoenix Business RadioX. Amplifying the voice of business, Phoenix Business RadioX helps local businesses and professional associations get the word out about the important work they’re doing to serve their market, profession and community. A successful author, speaker and the creator of Deep Impact Leadership™ and SoulMarks Coaching™, Nowicki is a two-time recipient of the prestigious national Choice Award® for her book and personal development retreat. In addition, Nowicki has been an expert guest on regional TV and radio shows, including Fox Phoenix Morning Show, Sonoran Living, Good Morning Arizona, The Chat Room and Mid-Day Arizona. Recognized for her leadership and business acumen, she has been a regular contributor to many print and online magazines – publishing articles and blogs for business and education.