If “digital transformation” sounds exciting but also… overwhelming, you’re not alone.
In today’s episode of More Than Just Task Management, Anna Angelova and Jores Minasvand cut through the tech buzzwords and reveal the real first step to modernizing your business: focus on your business, not the tools.
Join them as they share insights drawn from decades of experience helping businesses, from small startups to billion-dollar corporations, avoid expensive tech mistakes and build sustainable systems that actually work.
Here’s what you’ll take away:
- Why your business goals and bottlenecks, not flashy apps, should drive every tech decision
- How to run a practical “blank page” exercise to rethink processes without being trapped by outdated systems
- A step-by-step roadmap to assess your technology needs before spending a dollar on new software
Anna and Jores share real-world examples, including how outdated “Frankenstein systems” can strangle growth and how to know when it’s time to start fresh.
Thinking about upgrading your systems or just feeling stuck? Click here to explore how Anna and Jores can help you assess your technology needs and build a roadmap that sets your business up for future growth.
Episode Transcript
Transcript was automatically generated as part of the recording and is not edited. There might be some discrepancies.
Anna Angelova 0:05
Welcome to More Than Just Task Management, your favorite daily podcast where we help you build a successful business with me, Anna Angelova, business coach and consultant, and my favorite co-host, Jores Minasvand, a business consultant. Hey, Jores.
Jores Minasvand 0:20
Hi Anna. Happy Wednesday. Beautiful day.
Anna Angelova 0:21
Happy Wednesday.
It is a beautiful day and we have a beautiful topic for today. This is something where we’ve talked with a few business owners, mid-sized businesses and we have a lot of conversations with business owners around technology because we both have background in technology.
And so many of the people we talk with, the business owners we talk with, like they mentioned that absolutely they they would love to have transformation, digital transformation and do things. And yet they’re not even sure where to start. They’re not even sure how to assess their own technology needs.
And this has come up quite a few times in conversations and we thought that, you know, this might be a good topic to discuss. So as you’re listening, if this is something that you’re experiencing, if you know that.
Your business would benefit from updated technology from better technology, but you’re not sure how even to start, where to start, how even to assess your technology needs. This episode is for you and.
I would give you the microphone, Jores, because you are way more attached to this world, connected to this world, and I’d love to hear your initial thoughts on what can business owners do when it comes to assessing the technology needs of their.
Companies.
Jores Minasvand 1:57
Well, since the Industry 3.0 revolution which started in 2000 where Internet and technology started emerging into the business, it has been a completely wrong misconception and and I go to businesses and I talk to them and both sides of IT on the left side of the boardroom and.
Business on the right side of the board and they all look at me like, oh crap, he’s right. The misconception is that technology drives business, which it doesn’t. Business drives business. Technology is just a tool, the means.
Or to provide a business purpose. And if a lot of companies have forgotten this, a lot of companies at any size, you know, and large corporate size.
They have gone the the way of let’s pick a technology to build our business processes and they have failed many, many, many times repeated the same thing. So the question that you you you asked Anna was is how do I understand what technology I need, right? Start with a business.
You do not talk about technology until probably it comes to about, I would say about two weeks to three months, depending on the size of the company and project before implementation. Only when you’re designing, when you’re in a design phase, you talk about technology, you pick the technology stack.
Up to that moment, which will can take you anywhere from six months to two years, depending again on the size of the company, you’re doing assessment and assessment of what you’re basically interviewing your businesses.
And again, depending on the the lines of businesses that you have, depending on the size of your corporation, you sit with the business and ask them the question. If you had data at your fingertips today, what would you do with it? What problem would you would it solve for you?
Start writing them down. Start aligning them. Create a road map for all of your business lines of businesses. Or if you’re a medium company, you’re just one line of business, but all the your different departments, all the problems they will solve. Put some timelines and priorities.
And then you start execution. When you’re executing part of the execution, you there’s a design stage after the requirements and the design stage is when you talk about what.
Technology stack suits best to solve this problem.
That’s the first question. Second, when you find that technology, does this technology align with our technology roadmap or our vision of technology or even business technology? Does it cover more than just one use case?
Number of questions once once you decide that you implement a small design, the small use use case, you prove the value and then you repeat and expand so.
The question is, don’t go to technology until you’re just about to implement. Literally, do not start with technology.
Anna Angelova 5:09
And we’ve discussed this before as well. It’s all about people, processes, technology.
So and what Jores, what you said exactly if you start with the business like what’s the business problem like why like when we talk with the potential clients, when we talk with our clients like and we do this kind of assessment like for companies that are not.
Able to do the assessment or don’t want to do this assessment. They want it faster and they want it done properly. The first time like we do these kind of assessments like we go and we do this within the bigger companies, it can go up to two weeks.
And it all starts with, OK, what’s the business goal? What’s the business problem? What are we really solving for in terms of business needs? And this is where we start. And we look at people, we look at processes and technology is.
The last place where we look at, yes, it might be the problem. Yes, it might turn out. Sometimes it turns out I do have the people, you have the processes, but then you have a ******, outdated technology that is the only thing you need. You just need to replace it and that’s it. It’s absolutely possible.
Jores Minasvand 6:13
Mhm.
Mm.
Anna Angelova 6:30
Especially small mid sized businesses where for example their website you were saying that example even from a few years ago where once you made the website faster and better with that party in a box that how it opened up things. So yes sometimes it might be that especially.
Jores Minasvand 6:44
E.
E.
Anna Angelova 6:50
For small businesses, for some of them, their website is just a static page, even in 2025. So for sometimes it might be that you have things working, it’s just that it’s technology, but more often than not.
When we work with businesses, it actually uncovers more in the work that needs to be done. First, these people and processes and then it’s the technology. So absolutely your assessment starts with focusing on the business, focusing on the business goals, the business needs the bottleneck, like what’s the bottleneck?
And from there you start solving it and add layer technology on top of people and processes. Absolutely. And of course like as you were sharing some of these things though.
Again, especially with small businesses, mid-size businesses, sometimes they are using outdated technology and sometimes it’s a real pain in the whatever and and sometimes they do reach a stage where the technology itself is the thing that needs to be removed and replaced completely.
Jores Minasvand 7:49
Mm.
Mhm.
Yeah.
Anna Angelova 8:02
It happens. It happens because we’ve seen with some business owners that because they get used to things, they they’re not open to moving to new versions. They’re not open to moving to new, even new software. They keep on using something that is stitched and.
Jores Minasvand 8:03
Mm.
Yeah.
Mm.
Anna Angelova 8:21
It’s again like it’s so painful that it.
Jores Minasvand 8:26
And one of the downsides of these scenario that you just mentioned, Anna, is that inadvertently what they have done to adapt to that stitched monster, you know, Frankenstein’s monster kind of technology that they used, they have wrapped their processes around this. So in this case it’s not about.
Modernizing just the the platform itself and I’ve seen quite a few versions of this where that doesn’t work anymore. So again, you gather all the requirements, you put it aside, then you go back to do to the processes and say are these processes even?
Viable. Do they even make sense? And imagine what happens if we we actually did an assessment on one of the platforms. If we had like brought it to the modern platform, all the processes would have failed.
Anna Angelova 9:04
They make sense. Yeah. Do they make sense? Yes.
Jores Minasvand 9:18
And they would have resulted into a very negative results. So we stopped and we said, OK, we’re not modernizing this platform, we’re going to throw it away. All we’re going to keep is the data and the sum of the processes. We’ll go back to the requirements, build new processes, build new application, new technology.
And move forward.
Anna Angelova 9:39
Such a great point that as businesses as they’re using and this is not limited to small and mid-sized businesses because I know that some of the examples you you have are from corporations where they’re so ingrained into something old that has been stitched and and keep on they keep on stitching it that the whole process is wrapped around it. But if you.
You start from a blank page and this is one exercise that you can do as well. Scrap everything in your mind like it’s an exercise. Get with your team, especially if you have a bigger team like with your leadership team, the main people in your business, get in your room on a white board and.
Say, OK, let’s imagine we’re starting from zero. Like we are not dependent. Like we don’t have the process, we don’t have the technology. Like let’s start from zero. What would make sense? What kind of process will really deliver the result? What kind of technology? And of course the people like starting.
With the people. So this is another exercise that you can do as well. It’s completely wiped out. This exercise is actually really powerful. It can be done not just when it comes to think about your technology, it can be done even for your org chart. From time to time you might actually want to look at your org chart and say.
Jores Minasvand 10:54
E.
Yeah.
Anna Angelova 10:57
Scrap it. Forget about that. We have an org chart. What org chart makes sense for the company where we are and where we want to be and then see who fits where and whether you have missing people or or people need to be assigned different roles or maybe someone doesn’t belong in your company anymore.
So this is a really great and I think I’ve heard that a lot of consulting companies and other companies are using these even for setting a budget. Imagine we’re starting from zero. Forget about the budget we had last year.
Jores Minasvand 11:28
Um.
Anna Angelova 11:31
Imagine we’re starting from zero, what process would make sense and then layer the technology and this is how you can another way you can assess your technology needs.
Jores Minasvand 11:31
Mhm.
100 percent, 100%, absolutely.
Anna Angelova 11:44
And again, as I mentioned that we do this work with the clients who.
What thing’s done faster? What things done the right way from the first time? Because yes, we are sharing and of course you can go and Google it, ask ChatGPT to see how to do this. But a lot of the people we work with, they don’t have time, like they don’t actually have the time to step aside and do this kind of assessment.
And our drive 360 business solutions and the assessment part of it is what dives into this and helps you assess your own technology needs and see what’s going on. So I will add a link if you’re interested. If you want to apply and work with us, we do open a few spots every month.
We want up to four spots every month because we really want to provide value and want to focus on the few people we work with, the few businesses we work with, who give our full attention because.
This is something that we deliver personally and yeah, check the link. I will add it in the description and this might be your way of assessing your technology needs and taking your business to the next level.
Jores Minasvand 12:59
We can definitely help you.
Anna Angelova 13:05
Anything else to add, Jores, in terms of assessing your technology needs?
Jores Minasvand 13:09
No, I think it’s very clear. I mean without a road map you’re not going anywhere and without the proper assessment you cannot have a clear road map. It’s very plain and simple and it can this can be sugar coated in a million ways to charge companies from anywhere from 3 to $10 million.
Or you can do it with $30,000 and give a multi-billion dollar company the roadmap that after three years they’re still implementing it and they’re successful. So it’s all about knowing what you’re doing and do it the right way and it’s it’s I cannot put it any simpler and if you have any doubts just.
Book a call with us. It’s complimentary and we can help you, you know, get clear clearance on how you can do it and how we can help.
Anna Angelova 13:59
Very well said. Thank you. Amazing way to end our conversation today and tomorrow we are going back to talking about.
A topic that’s more towards people who are just starting a business. So if you’re just starting, if you’re just starting the business and you’re wondering how you align your business with your personal values and purpose, TuneIn.
Jores Minasvand 14:17
Not be your department. People are your department.
Anna Angelova 14:28
And.
Jores Minasvand 14:29
You’ll be hearing Anna talk all the whole time. I’ll be like technology, technology, Anna will be people, people.
Anna Angelova 14:32
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Most likely.
People, people, most likely. And then even if you have a business, like even if you’re like you’re listening right now to this conversation because you do have a business that’s well established, tomorrow’s conversation can be like a great reminder about the company values, the company purpose and why you started this.
Business. So I would recommend you tune in even if you are not new in business. If even if your business has been operating for a decade now or even more, tomorrow’s conversation might be a great reminder to take you back to the roots and remind you of the why.
Jores Minasvand 15:06
Mhm.
Anna Angelova 15:11
So TuneIn. And if you are just starting your business, definitely TuneIn because it’s another awesome conversation.
Jores Minasvand 15:12
All right.
Anna Angelova 15:23
Thanks, Jores. See you tomorrow. Bye.
