The answer is NO. Digital Business Strategy is nowadays an integral component of Business Strategy – Or should be! Many might be thinking why or do not understand the relationship.
A common fact in many growing businesses is that they are manually completing tasks that could be automated, and this becomes a limitation to power up productivity.
The rapid migration to digital technologies driven by the pandemic will continue into the recovery. Organizations need to keep pace accelerating the building of their digital capabilities. By now, most leaders have led their companies to digitize at least some part of their business to protect employees and serve customers. We have experienced a historic deployment of remote work and digital access to services across every domain.
Indeed, recent data shows that we have vaulted five years forward in consumer and business digital adoption in a matter of around 8 weeks. Banks have transitioned to remote sales and service teams and launched digital outreach to customers to make flexible payment arrangements for loans and mortgages. Grocery stores have shifted to online ordering and delivery as their primary business. Schools in many locations have pivoted to online learning and digital classrooms. Doctors have begun delivering telemedicine. And the list goes on.
As some regions begin reopening, businesses are considering how to return to some semblance of full speed in an unstable environment in which lockdowns will ease (And potentially be reinstated) in waves. In doing so, they will need to confront three structural changes that are playing out:
1. Customer behaviors and preferred interactions have changed significantly. Companies will need to ensure that their digital channels are on par with or better than those of their competition to succeed in this new environment.
2. As the economy staggers back, demand recovery will be unpredictable; uneven across geographies, sectors, product categories, and customer segments; and often slow to return to precrisis levels. While a few sectors will face unusually strong demand, leaders in many industries must deal with periods of structural overcapacity. Those companies face the painful need to right size the cost base and capital of their operations, supply chains, and organizations overall and to transition their fixed costs to variable costs aggressively wherever possible.
3. Many organizations shifted to remote-working models almost overnight. A remote-first setup allows companies to mobilize their expertise instantly, organize a project review (No matter with how many people – 20 or 200) immediately, and respond to customer inquiries more rapidly by providing everything from product or service information to sales and after-sales support digitally.
New data and completely rebuilt analytical models will be essential to steer operational decisions.
The 3 big components to be considered when creating and executing your strategy remain the same: Customers – Company – Competitors. But the approach to look at them and the new context where they play are totally different now. Digitally will play a center-stage role without any doubt.
Do you know how to create and successfully execute a Business Strategy that includes Digital?
