Quick question: is your organisation in the digital race?

The pace of change has never been as rapid as in today’s business environment. Hardly a week goes by without the launch of a new app or social channel. Consumers are highly susceptible to change and exhibit knee-jerk reactions, quickly modifying their behaviour, which leads to the swift emergence of competitors and disruptive business models. To keep up with the rapid digital pace of change, you need to be just as fast.

The ‘Elastoplast digital solution’

To try and keep up, many businesses embark on a digital transformation programme but often this is a quick technology adoption programme in reaction to current problems, rather than a forward-thinking solution for the future. It takes more than just technology to transform a business into a digitally liberated one, one that’s able to respond to change and unforeseen disruption. In order to achieve this, organisations need to transform their business models.

How fast is your digital organisation?

Companies that have embarked on the journey to digital freedom tend to fall into three categories – formative, radical or cautious. Where they fall on the scale depends on the technical capabilities they’ve implemented, how well their organisation has responded to the tech and how connected their business model is across all the customer touch points.

Formative – just out of the starting blocks

Formative brands or businesses have just begun their journey to digital freedom. They have a limited technical capability and low adoption rates within their company. These two factors might even have stalled the entire transformation process. They may be facing problems that include a legacy platform that doesn’t offer all the technical features they need. Or they may be facing implementation problems where their businesses don’t have the right components to deliver the right experiences across multiple sites.

To become digitally free, formative companies must map out their path to success. The starting point is getting buy-in to their digital vision at senior level. Then they need to develop a ground-up assessment of how to make the vision a reality through a programme of incremental change.

Radicalm – leading the pack

Radical organisations are the technical wizards who were quick to see the value of digital and aggressively embraced it by investing in the right technology. The problem a radical company faces is the rest of the organisation might not necessarily have bought into the vision. So even if the technology is perfect, it amounts to nothing if surrounding business processes haven’t been integrated with it.

Unless these companies can drive business adoption, their technology investments risk becoming white elephants. To overcome this, radical organisations need to get their business stakeholder more involved before making any further investment.

Cautious – left behind in the slipstream

Cautious companies have taken the hesitant route for a number of reasons. Firstly, the cost and complexity of implementing a capable platform might be too prohibitive. Secondly, they may not understand the scale of the capability development task. And lastly, their business leaders might not have woken up to the fact that digital needs to be a critical part of the business process.

Unfortunately, if a business is too cautious, they can’t take advantage of disruption. A classic example is how Airbnb inspired an entirely new way to book a holiday. Accommodation or rental companies without digital freedom were left behind when this new way of thinking emerged.

To embrace digital freedom cautious companies have to have their finger firmly on the pulse of their market to avoid any unpleasant, unexpected surprises. They need to engage with thought-leaders from other industries to ensure their business or brand doesn’t miss great opportunities.

Liberated – free to perform

A liberated digital organisation is the target, but not the end of the story. Businesses need to keep putting effort into maintaining their leadership role. Technology will always evolve and adoption will be an ongoing process. If they take their eye off the finish line, they could soon fall far behind.

The pertinent question is, “Is your business even in the race?”