There is a lot of talk these days about going digital, digital disruption and the digitisation of business. But what does going digital mean, and more importantly, what does it mean to you.
To me, digital is taking how you are doing something today, and delivering that more efficiently tomorrow, in a way more easily consumed. Achieved by leveraging new technologies, more automated business processes and more agile cultures and communities.
An example of this is Spotify. Five years ago if I wanted to hear my favourite artist and their latest album I would have needed to buy their CD from a music store. Today, I only need subscribe to a streaming music service and I can listen to all of their songs (plus other artist’s music) for a simple monthly fee.
Going digital requires an organisation to re-examine their way of doing business and provides an opportunity to get back to their “why”.
It requires an organisation to be brave enough to challenge their old ways of thinking and strong enough to drive innovation in the way they approach their market and customers. “We’ve always done it that way” should not be acceptable anymore.
Digital is about unlocking growth and opportunity. Allowing you the opportunity to move into adjacent industries and market segments, or turning things on their head to create new and unique market opportunities. Digital allows you to connect, deliver and delight in ways you can’t do today.
But where do you start with digital and how?
Tip #1 – Strategy & vision
Before embarking on digital transformation ensure your organisation’s vision and strategy is clear and understood. More importantly, ensure any outputs of the digital transformation can be aligned to your strategic vision.
Tip #2 – Don’t under-estimate the change
Most organisations get the strategy right, however a significant number of companies undertaking digital transformation fail to achieve the desired business outcome. Don’t underestimate the depth and scope of changes to internal processes, structure, technology, data management and risk that are necessary to effect your businesses transformation.
Tip #3 – Introduce continual transformation
Don’t lull yourself into complacency based on a new revenue stream. The market place and customer needs keep changing. Organisations must keep transforming.
Tip #4 – Anticipate your customer needs
Digital transformation doesn’t just need to align to customer needs, it needs to anticipate them. You can decode your customer demand by identifying the transformation triggers that are affecting your customers.
Our approach to Digital is not to try and boil the ocean. Most of the time that is simply not possible, affordable or practical. Rather we prefer an approach that will deliver meaningful and measureable results fast, in a way that can be scaled up and out.
If we were to use the analogy of building you a house; we would deliver you a complete and usable room that you can functionally live in first, whilst we work together to renovate the rest of your house. That way you are getting measureable benefits fast, along with the ability to be able to scale up and out.
We believe that you know your business better than anyone else and that the most effective way we can deliver lasting value to you is by combining our real world experience and advice with your business knowledge.
If you want to talk to me about this, call me on +61 402 892 468 and check out this case study.
