The TARGET Map: the Five Levels of Technology

In a presentation a quarter of a century ago, I stated, “Leading-edge organisations do not maintain their position using trailing-edge technologies.” At that moment, I did not think that the statement would become so prophetic but still very applicable to today’s competitive global markets.

At that time, I also developed the TARGET Map of Technology, a planning template to review what technology was in place within an organisation. Within that concept was this premise: Technology, no matter what it is, ultimately becomes obsolete and replacing it becomes a continual process. TARGET was a very descriptive acronym. It stands for: Technology and Revolutionary Gadgets that Eventually Timeout.

The five levels of technology within the TARGET Map of Technology are embryonic, proven, accepted, safe, and obsolete. No matter what you implement in your organisation’s network or information technology infrastructure, it will sooner or later work its way through these five stages from being emerging state-of-the-art technology that provides a competitive advantage (embryonic) to being a competitive disadvantage to maintain (obsolete).

In every organisation, resources are limited. With the TARGET Map, they are referred to as a DART (Designated Active Resource with a Timeframe). A DART could be a person, machine, computer, outside resource or a process.

Strategic I.T. Planning becomes as easy as throwing DARTs at the TARGET. Allocating resources and understanding how they are being used is sometimes a function that is not clearly understood by executives dealing with a lot of applied technology within an organisation. If they can visualise how resources are being allocated across the spectrum of technology that is being employed within their enterprise, they can make better decisions as to how to apply and effectively use those resources.

These strategic concepts have withstood the test of time because there is also a continual cycle for organisational competitiveness. In this continuous cycle, an enterprise’s technology transforms from being a competitive advantage over time to a competitive necessity to maintain pace within an industry to eventually becoming a competitive disadvantage depending on various factors including where an organisation is at with the application of technology compared to their competition. Certain industries are more competitive than others and this environment will accelerate change.

To re-energise the enterprise and make it competitive again, an investment of applying new technology is necessary and the cycle repeats itself.

How many organisations today are maintaining obsolete systems and applications? When technology is obsolete, you are wasting money trying to maintain it. Trying to maintain obsolete systems is also a waste of human resources and creates a susceptibility to become very weak against competition.

Rather than define every single technology and assign it to a layer, it is more effective to leave defining the specific technologies to the organisation using the tool. The TARGET Map could be used as a planning template over all the technologies that were in place within an organisation in order to understand what was being utilised.

This parallels the military concept that “strategies do not change, tactics do”. The strategic reason to applying technology to the organisation is the same: apply technology to make the organisation more competitive. Technology is the various tactics. Tactics change, just like technologies change.

All of these questions could be easily answered by utilising the TARGET Map tool:

how much budget was allocated to each level of technology within the organisation? Is the budget divided correctly or is it being wasted on maintaining obsolete technologies or technologies that do not give the organisation a competitive advantage?

Was there enough to put into emerging (embryonic) technologies to try to facilitate some type of competitive advantage? How do we compare with other competitors within the industry? How do we compare to organisations within other industries?

Visualising allocating the resources can provide a better perspective.

Technology should be viewed as an investment, not as an expense. In many organisations, the core business is intertwined with the platform of technology supporting it.

A good example of the core business being tightly intertwined with technology is the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. One of their applications which supports electronic trading is critical to their operations and gives them the competitive advantage over their competition.

More executives should view information and communications technologies as a strategic enabler for competitive advantages for their organisation’s strategic initiatives and not just as an expense item.

CARLINI-ISM: applying technology is a continual process because all technology eventually becomes obsolete.

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Copyright 2010 – James Carlini