Have you heard? A property management group out of Chicago did a survey of "high-tech hubs" that ranked the Twin Cities 20th in the nation. While we have some notable assets — highly educated professionals and a plethora of innovative types seeking patents — the number of information technology (IT) workers in Minnesota has fallen considerably since 2000.
In response, many civic-minded people are proposing creative strategies to draw more techies to our area, from promoting venture capital to building tech corridors. Even the Star Tribune weighed in with some ideas and a call to action in a recent editorial.
As someone who started a thriving IT consulting and training business 20 years ago in Minnesota, I have a slightly different perspective. Minnesota businesses, nonprofits and even governmental agencies have the power to transform the Twin Cities into a top technology hot spot overnight, transforming their own organizations in the process.
How?
By immediately harnessing the power of sophisticated IT applications to transform organizational processes, strengthen customer engagements and kick-start productivity. In other words, everyone in Minnesota who is responsible for running a business, nonprofit or government agency should start using information technology as a positive performance driver instead of viewing tech resources as a necessary but not truly mission-critical … (wait for it … those dirtiest of business words) … cost center!
As many have discovered, savvy employment of information technology can do for the bottom line what a can of spinach did for that plucky little sailor man. IT applications that gather and analyze data, in real time and on the fly, then deliver that crucial information to the people who need it most on the front lines, represent a true business sea change.
Winfield Solutions, a subsidiary of Arden Hills-based Land O'Lakes, has pioneered a technology initiative that is helping the crop production and seed distribution subsidiary work with customers more effectively. According to an informative piece in SearchCIO magazine this past June, former Land O'Lakes CIO Barry Libenson (he has since moved on to serve as CIO at Safeway Inc.) and his IT team combined "internal customer data with reams of external data … to help the business predict what crops [would] yield the highest value where — down to the acre.
"The new initiative not only involves integrating diverse data from disparate sources but also putting complex yet easy-to-understand analytics right into the hands of the company's internal sales and marketing team, as well as into the hands of the cooperatives and farmers it distributes to — Land O'Lakes' external customers."