What's Wrong With Tech Ecosystems?
Ecosystems are a bit played out and at this point it’s often a buzzword that can carry painful memories of solutions that were advertised to work together in miraculous ways but fell far short of expectations. It may also evoke feelings of overpriced solutions that create connections through an excess of proprietary hardware/software. Sometimes though, an ecosystem creates seamless processes that are so drenched in cohesive behavior they leave the competition looking obsolete.
Since I’m sure you’re already thinking about it, let’s talk about Apple. For some of you that may be a trigger word, as their ecosystem lends itself anti-competitive and overpriced at times, and I promise we’ll cover that in a second. It’s the most prominent ecosystem around and while it does have its downsides, they’ve created a platform that regularly leaves us dumbfounded. The most recent awe inspiring moment for me was connecting AirPods to my phone. You simply open the case near your phone and suddenly they’re paired. That’s it. No button press combinations, long holds, or waiting on the bluetooth device to appear and connect. While not a life-changing level of efficiency it felt like I was given a glimpse into the future of wireless connections. For many though, it’s hard to get passed the price tag of a suite of products needed to make that solution work, especially when you’re only limited to the ecosystem you’re given, and not the one you need (I’m looking at you, HomePod, and your original lack of support for any music streaming services that wasn’t Apple Music).
We’ve learned from that. We’ve utilized a customer-driven development strategy to make sure that we’re creating solutions to problems that our customers regularly face. This means that we’re not only creating connections between solutions in meaningful ways, but also making these connections easy to use. As for the proprietary ecosystem, sure, trapping consumers into proprietary solutions is a great plan to maximize profits short-term, but it starts to fall flat. As a business you’re no longer incentivized to compete for your customer’s business and innovation suffers. For this reason, Hypersign has done away with nearly all proprietary pieces, which has the added benefit of allowing customers to tailor their solutions further to their existing environments.
How has this panned out for us? With an industry leading customer retention rate for the last 3 years.
Want to learn more about our ecosystem? Let us know! sales@hypersign.com