Growing your business through digital strategy and business strategy development is now possible with business models to help you form new and differentiating business capabilities. But how to grow your business with a digital strategy? What are the key issues, and more importantly, how do you get there? Keep reading this article, and you’ll have all the tips and keys to greatly improve your performance!
WHAT IS A DIGITAL STRATEGY?
Within your business, digital strategy focuses on using technology to improve the performance and reach of your business, whether it’s both creating new products and services, or reinventing current processes. With a digital strategy and business strategy in place, you can then create new competitive advantages through technology. This usually includes changes in business models, as new technologies allow innovative companies to provide services that were not possible before.
Today, technology has integrated itself into the business to become something more than hardware or software. As digital technology becomes more ubiquitous and companies make more progress in digital transformation, digital strategy and business strategy will become one.
It’s important to remember that developing an overall digital strategy (digital and business) should lead to the creation of a specific plan or roadmap, and in a concrete way. While you can continue to change the specific tactics you’ve decided to pursue, you also need to make a clear commitment to understanding what digital means for your business.
WHERE TO START? WHAT ARE THE STEPS TO AN EFFECTIVE DIGITAL STRATEGY?
A digital strategy provides companies with the framework they need to effectively use digital tools to improve their business performance. Understanding the current digital state of the business, where the industry is heading and what role it should play in this digital environment will lead to defining what the path forward will look like for your business to effectively achieve this outcome.
Here are the 3 main areas that influence how successful companies approach their digital strategy :
Being agile: the overall digital strategy succeeds through agile digital practices. The more adaptive you are in planning, executing, and revising your digital strategies; the more likely you are to achieve first-mover status, a source of significant economic advantage.
Utilize all digital performance: improve digital literacy across the enterprise, leveraging digital platforms and the ability to expand ecosystems. Use these digital platforms to innovate new digital products and business models.
Merge and acquire: use mergers and acquisitions to develop new digital capabilities. Invest more aggressively than your competitors and diversify.
WHAT ARE THE STEPS TO IMPLEMENTING A DIGITAL AND BUSINESS STRATEGY?
Once you’re ready to launch and accelerate your digital transformation process, understanding the steps to implement the digital strategy will ensure you maintain your digital momentum. For each of the steps, we’ll give you concrete examples so you can tailor the development of this strategy to your business.
STEP 1: DEFINING VALUE
Once you have defined the scope of the digital transformation commitment (digital and business), and made this digital strategy a central objective of your program, you will need to have a clear and ambitious vision on your project.
Case in point: in order to have a clear vision of your project, start by gathering your team and collaborators so that everyone has a role to play but above all that everyone can benefit. Defining the value of your company will allow you to define the main strategic orientations. To define the value of your project, you will have to put yourself in the shoes of your customers: what can you bring them? How can you differentiate yourself from your competitors? What are your specificities? How can the implementation of a digital and commercial strategy propel your company?
STEP 2: LAUNCH AND ACCELERATE
It is easy to launch your digital strategy in your company, but much more difficult to maintain the momentum and stimulate innovation. Don’t hesitate to surround yourself with the right people who can help you execute projects that will generate significant rewards with minimal risk. Review the company’s structure and adopt agile work models to foster a digital culture in your company.
Case in point: to launch and accelerate your digital strategy, you must first understand that this is about growing your business. Start by doing an internal audit of your company (SEO audit, editorial audit, strategic audit by evaluating your offer and your business model, and a SWOT audit that represents your main strengths and areas for improvement). Then go on with an external audit: set up a competitive intelligence and a market analysis: what are your competitors doing? Who are they? How do they communicate with their target and with which digital media?
A MEDIUM/LONG TERM PROJECT: AIM HIGH!
Generally speaking, short-term projects take a few hours, days or weeks to complete. Long-term projects take months or years to complete. As a general rule, companies need more documentation and infrastructure for long-term efforts. Planning and managing a long-term project presents special challenges. Often, the work you do a year or more into the future depends on the results of the work you do between now and then. Even if you can accurately predict the work you will do later, the further into the future you plan, the more likely it is that something will change and require you to modify your plans.
When developing a work breakdown structure for a long-term project, use a rolling approach, in which you continually refine your plans throughout the life of your project as you learn more about the project and its environment.
BUT FOLLOW A PROJECT ON THE MEDIUM/LONG TERM?
Break down the first three months or weeks of work
Plan the rest of the project with less detail
Review your initial plan at the end of the first period and for the next three months or weeks
Modify any future work as necessary based on the results of your first three months of work
Continue to revise your plan in this way throughout your project
Keep in mind that if you hope to build a successful digital strategy into your business without changing the fundamentals of the business, your efforts will be in vain. Integrating digital into your business strategy is not about creating a digital business, it’s about making an absolute change in your entire business. Understanding that implementing a digital strategy is not just about adding digital innovations to your business, but more about rethinking how your business can operate with digital integrated is the foundation of a successful digital and business strategy for your company.
