I love when companies decide to pretend their marketing claims are real. Recently, I came back across several where companies that were leading a traditional industry decided to say the equivalent of “We’re not a [pick an industry] company, we’re a technology company.” I have to hold back my laughter every time.
Let’s start off by acknowledging that no large company can succeed without investing in technology. That includes the traditional day-to-day, do-your-work technology that every needs but also includes the specialty stuff that you need to keep up with/ahead of your competitors. This is table stakes to being a leading company in any industry. There’s nothing special here.
Just because you put $100m into new or proprietary technology, you do not suddenly become a technology company. You are simply a company doing the smart thing and using technology as a differentiator. Unless 90% of your customer interactions are through your tech, take a deep breath and stop letting your marketing department run wild.
Being a technology company is about more than just having a lot of money dumped into systems. It’s about living and breathing by those systems. It’s about your entire future being bet on the success of those systems. It’s about being aggressively invested into that technology being the future of your company. Only if you do that can you be a tech company.
So please stop letting your marketing groups drive you to making silly claims.