Digital Strategy – plan for your success today
Digital strategy is emerging to become crucial for any business to reach full potential and success both now and in the future. Companies must start to understand today what new technology is emerging. Many of these new technologies will create customer service experiences that will become completely normal to the consumer in less than 5 years. To be able to keep up with these ever involving techs, companies need to be looking into the future and planning for them now. Integrating them into your business models could require huge organisation shifts and changes as well as differing ways of measuring success metrics. These changes may require time therefore a timeline for implementing these is essential.
Last is never first
The first thing you must do today is start planning. You may feel secure in the fact that you have maybe recently updated some software or introduced a new system that has streamlined a system. But it may not be enough. There is probably out there another business already a few steps ahead with a future thinker already planning for emerging tech to be implemented in their business now. This gives them an advantage as they are ahead of the curve in planning and experimenting with their use. By the time you’re aware of a game changing tech in your industry they may already be using it.
Evaluate
When considering planning for a new technology to enhance your customers journey, you need to carefully evaluate its usefulness. How much does it transform the customer journey? Does it accelerate your ability to do business digitally ( ever important in these social distancing times) , how much does it embrace the shift to a mobile devices?, Does it turn data into useful insights?, Will it increase revenue and profit?, How will it change my employees ability to do their job more effectively and enjoyably?
The evaluate stage when you are putting together a digital strategy is the foundation that enables it to be effective. You don’t want to plan for something that will cost time and money but achieve little result.
The future is here
Your customers already know it and are living it. But have you kept up? You may be only now harnessing the power of messaging platforms integrating into your website. But your customers have been messaging their friends instead of using the phone for years. Customers are driving the experience they want and they choose who to do business based on this. This is why younger companies are often better placed to provide this. They don’t have encumbering long held systems that people are unwilling to change. They can adapt and pivot as soon as the see a change in customer behaviour. The IDC have recently put out an eye opening statistic – By 2023, IDC predicts, over half (52%) of global GDP will be accounted for by digitally transformed enterprises.
If reading this article has made you aware of your need for a digital strategy, but you don’t know where to start, our digital strategist John Jones can work with you. Find out more and Contact us today for a free consultation.
Look out for our next article coming out in this series about why digital strategy can sometimes fail and how to avoid common pitfalls.