As a matter of course, my colleagues at Quest and I often ask our clients, ‘Where does it hurt?’

We get quite a variety of answers, but without question the most interesting — and for our clients, by far the most value-generating — are those that focus on business needs rather than technology needs.

Our story about how Quest has been able to help Paras and Associates field a state-of-the-art new business service is a case in point. Paras came to us looking for much more than help with routers and firewalls. They sought a collaboration — of their expertise in interpreter services and Quest’s expertise in technology — in order to create something that never existed before: one of the world’s first video/voice-over-IP call-center-based interpreter services.

Solutions that are more than the sum of their parts

It’s tempting to focus on a particular product when considering solutions to business problems. But as technology products become more and more commoditized, the opportunity to (forgive the cliché ) think out of the box is greater than ever. All you need is

• An ability to articulate your problem in strategic terms and
• A technology partner, like Quest, able to use available technology commodities to create new capabilities and new solutions that are more than the sum of their parts.

So I encourage you to think beyond technology products. Think about your business needs, about the end results you seek. With the right technology partner, your business expertise can be leveraged, your business vision can be realized, and the result will be value creation.