In our Digital Business (DB) series journey so far, we
Examined what it takes to be a digital business.
Put digital landscapes into perspective by looking at how businesses use applications to create advantage.
Mapped out the journey you need to navigate to become a Digital Business.
In this post, we approach what being or becoming a Digital Business means for a start-up or an incumbent established business.
Start-Up mode
Starting a digital-native business or business unit from scratch has its advantages. In start-ups, there are no legacy processes, mindsets or technical debt to handle. Challenges are deeply rooted around starting everything from the ground floor, spreading your time across:
Creating and shipping your digital solution in line with your business purpose
Establishing key standard operating procedures (SOPs)
Meeting regulatory requirements in terms of documentation and their impact on processes
Engaging and training your talent pools
Developing new partnerships and go-to-market routes
Etc
Established businesses have a completely different set of complex and delicate challenges.
Incumbent mode
As an incumbent, you are already dealing with an existing set of clients using specific product capabilities, existing ways and engagement rules. You have ongoing customer relationships to maintain and most likely have a ton of technical debt to deal with that went unmanaged for far too long.
This means that, unlike digitally-born start-ups, you need to drive two types of change while balancing the current value of business assets and re-structure to enabling digital scale and growth:
Internal change
External change
What this means for you
Whether you are operating in an Incumbent or start-up mode, the baseline rules are the same:
Understand the nature of your abilities and challenges
Have a crisp definition of the value you and your business provides and to which stakeholders
Define measures of success of stakeholders using your product/services, and map out the systems of work needed to fulfil
Identify any supportive environments required to survive and focus (platforms, work management, support, finance/treasury, HR, leave management etc.)
Manage regulatory expectations
Invest with purpose. Ensure board and leadership mandates are aligned and backing you both in principle and investment priorities.
Ensure leadership adequacy, time availability, and the focus needed to build an environment that can launch, operate, promote, and transact value 24/7/365
Determine what it takes to keep your customers engaged for as long as possible globally
Advancing Digital Business Assets
Organisations typically either try to pivot into starting a software company or becoming a digital-first provider, without necessarily understanding the key capabilities, supporting environment, regulatory, investment, leadership, time and focus needed to launch, operate and maintain their ability to promote, trial value, transact and keep customers.
You may also not fully appreciate the multi-pronged effort needed to advance the value across your business assets. Not all assets need to grow together; however, they need to advance in harmony and mutual awareness.
Software business and digital transformation investments are more successful when backed by a scope of intent and clarity on which business asset value they will advance.
We suggest reviewing your plan with your leadership using a Business Model Canvas technique. Use its outcomes to get a common understanding of how your approach will impact the following areas of or your organisation:
Core Products
Value Chain
Organisation
If you notice that you are investing 80%+ of your energy in figuring out only one aspect of the above three, you can safely bet you are setting yourself up for failure.
You may be better off taking a step back and having deeper conversations with your team or people experienced in digital leadership to understand whether:
You can deliver the required value to your target audience
You are clear around the different ways you will promote and sell (direct/channel)
You are advantaged to use outsourcing/near-sourcing services for focus
You need to understand better the legal considerations (EULA, Privacy agreements, GDPR etc.)
You are approaching this work in a way that enables prototyping, and swift experimentation to achieve business, partner and customer frequent feedback and continued buy-in
Congratulations, with this approach, you have just established your baseline mindset to driving a Digital Business!
Go go go!
Wrapping Up
In our Digital Business (DB) series journey so far, we
Examined what it takes to be a digital business.
Clarified whether being a Digital Business is for you.
Put digital landscapes into perspective by looking at how businesses use applications to create advantage.
Mapped out the journey you need to navigate to become a Digital Business.
Discussed the implications of changing the business while running the business.
Explore the rest of the “Digital Business” series:
Post | Topic of Focus | Link |
DB-01 | Unpack what it takes to be a Digital Business | |
BD-02 | Is being a Digital Business for you? | |
DB-03 | Putting digital landscapes into perspective | |
DB-04 | Set your Digital Business north star | |
DB-05 | Changing the business while running the business | |
DB-06 | Understanding the Digital Business Mindset | |
DB-07 | Top 5 Key traits Digital Leadership should have | |
DB-08 | Unlocking Digital Business Agility | |
DB-09 | Top 8 capabilities you need to be a Digital Business |
There is no one-size-fits-all solution for companies to learn how to become a Digital Business.
It is only in uniting people, product & processes through a common vision, a deeply felt purpose, and a broadly shared dream that will continue to motivate stakeholders to push on and persevere.
Many paths can lead to your desired destination. Each route has varying degrees of complexity, sophistication and completeness. Our purpose is to share with you our lessons learned in building global software businesses to help you achieve a Digital Business with assets people want to buy.
Let us know what you think on this series, and whether you feel we left something important out. Reach out on Let's Talk or by email to [email protected].