When people talk about innovation, they usually start with technology. At RTS, one of the things we’ve learned is that building the technology is only part of the job. Innovation creates lasting value when an organization also builds the processes, expertise and discipline required to put that technology to work consistently.

That has been one of the biggest areas of focus for our Strategic Partnerships team. Our customers often operate across complex networks of locations, service providers and waste streams. Their objectives can involve operations, economics, sustainability, employee experience and customer experience simultaneously. Solving those challenges well requires more than having a good idea.

It requires a repeatable way to turn that idea into action.

Turning Expertise Into a System

Over the past year, our team at RTS has worked to strengthen the framework we use to manage strategic customer partnerships from evaluation through implementation and ongoing optimization. The hardest part was never documentation. It was alignment.

Our best work happens when Strategic Partnerships, Technology, Operations and other parts of RTS can bring different perspectives to the same customer problem.

  • What is the customer trying to accomplish?
  • What does the operational data tell us?
  • Where is the biggest opportunity?
  • Could technology create meaningful value here?
  • How should we measure success?

Those questions allow us to begin with the customer’s problem rather than the technology we happen to have available. That’s particularly important as AI becomes more powerful. The fact that technology can do something does not automatically mean it is the right solution.

Our job is to determine where it can create real value.

Pello as a Business Decision

Our work with Pello is a good example. The technology can create a new level of visibility into what is happening at the point of collection. But deploying technology should never be the objective on its own.

Our Strategic Partnerships team has worked to make the evaluation more rigorous: understand the customer’s operational environment, identify where greater intelligence could make a difference and determine how the opportunity should be measured. That discipline makes the technology more valuable.

It also makes innovation more credible. Customers should have confidence that when RTS recommends a new capability, there is a clear reason behind the recommendation.

The Infrastructure Behind Innovation

Most customers will never see the systems our team has built around this work. They shouldn’t have to.

What they should experience is a partner that communicates consistently, implements effectively, understands the business case and brings the right RTS experts together around the problem. That is the larger lesson I’ve taken from this work. Innovation does not scale through individual heroics. It scales when great people have great systems around them. AI makes that even more important.

As technology helps us analyze more information and work faster, organizations need equally strong frameworks for deciding how that technology should be used. At RTS, we’re investing in both sides of that equation. We’re building the technology that can change waste operations. And we’re building the organizational discipline required to make sure that innovation actually delivers value.