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Business moves fast, but technology moves faster.
In order to keep up, businesses need to embrace open innovation initiatives, which means they need to run more proof-of-concepts (PoCs). When using older proof-of-concept methods, though, that is easier said than done.
Companies who still perform PoCs the old way get bogged down in a costly time-consuming process that no longer makes sense in the modern market.
How Proof-of-Concepts Improve the Innovation Process
Businesses should not have to rely on slow antiquated processes to determine which technology solution fits their needs for any given innovation initiative.
Speeding up the PoC process optimizes the entire innovation process and broadens the possibilities for innovation managers.
What Should a Proof-of-Concept Look Like in the 21st Century?
Corporate innovation has gone through a lot of changes in recent years. The speed and standard of software development have skyrocketed, increasing the pool of possible vendors. This growing pool gives innovating companies more choices, but it also makes the decision-making process more complex.
Using older PoC methods is invariably time-consuming and resource intensive. Regulatory barriers, security risks and approximate evaluation options drag out the process and limit the number of technologies you can test.
Proof-of-concept platforms, however, make the process more efficient and effective for your company’s bottom line, providing a less complicated and less stressful way to find and evaluate new technologies.
Running a PoC today can be a simple, streamlined process that yields tailored results for effective decision-making.
Fewer Restrictions in the PoC Process
One of the most time consuming aspects of the old PoC method is finding a vendor that will meet your business’ innovation needs.
Rather than having to research and reach out, you can now filter through a directory of qualified vendors, choose the technologies that interest you the most and invite them all to join your PoC.
With a PoC platform there is no longer a need to run separate PoCs for each vendor you want to evaluate. Instead of running one resource-intensive PoC at a time, you can test multiple PoCs at the same time with several technologies in each. This exponentially speeds up the process of PoC testing, evaluating and, ultimately, innovating.
Furthermore, on a PoC platform you can make your PoC public so that vendors can apply to participate in your PoC. That way they come to you, instead of the burden being on you.
This increase in speed comes from migrating the entire proof-of-concept process to the cloud, thereby democratizing the vendor selection process, increasing efficiency and widening the avenues for innovation.
Personalized PoC Testing
With increased options and abilities comes an increase in information.
If modern technology has taught us anything, it is that where there is data, there is the possibility to maximize measurements and analyses.
Comparing the performance of solutions you are testing in the same PoC and forecasting how they will perform at scale and in production allows you to make informed decisions about which vendor will best fit your company’s innovation needs in a fraction of the time.
Using older methods, a company could waste time predicting and creating detailed testing environments only to still end up with generic results.
Utilizing all of the available data and analysis tools allows you to nail the nuances of your actual production environment for speedier and more actionable results.
A Simplified PoC Process
The key to a faster PoC process is to stop making it more complicated than it needs to be.
Technological innovations that led to the PoC platform have made PoCs more painless and useful than ever before.
Everything from finding the right vendors to configuring testing environments to analyzing performance can now be done on the cloud.
Cloud-based proof-of-concept testing puts the entire process at your fingertips – no more hunting for files or data.
Today, corporations must continuously innovate to stay relevant in a technological landscape that changes at the drop of a hat across every industry.
Regulation, risk and bureaucracy used to make the innovation process clunky and inefficient. But today, PoC platforms remove the roadblocks and frustrations from testing, evaluating and collaborating with vendors.
Comprehensive proof-of-concept platforms streamline your PoC needs and bring the process into the digital age.
They help with everything from finding vendors, building testing environments, populating those environments, setting requirements for participating startups and measuring performance.
In short, they make the process faster and more useful so that you can focus on the actual innovation, and not extraneous time-consuming minutiae.
Why Speed Up Your PoC Process?
61% of companies use open innovation to drive digital transformation. Many of those same companies utilize inefficient and outdated PoC techniques that waste time and resources.
By using a PoC platform, you can make running proof-of-concepts simple, streamlined and centralized.
The first step is understanding that PoCs do not need to follow the old model. Now, you can get more flexibility in your innovation planning, from access to qualified vendors to the number of technologies you test in each PoC and how many PoCs you run in parallel.
Customize your PoC results for reliable results that speed up testing and cut down on the time needed for the decision-making process.
End-to-end PoC platforms take regulatory and bureaucratic worries off of your plate, freeing up your time to look at what is truly best for your business.
