Frankly Speaking

Digital strategy is one of the key topics in business today. The digital technologies pervade to different areas in an organization starting from customer interaction to inventory tracking. The power of digital technology cannot be understated and will remain the priority of chief executives and chief information officers for at least the next 5 to 7 years. However, developing a comprehensive 5-7 years digital strategy is not an easy task either. There are several constraints that an organization faces in developing a solid digital strategy (including legacy IT systems and overcoming cultural issues). Besides all these challenges, prioritizing organization’s digital investments will be one of the key differentiators between a winning organization and laggard. The article is not focused on developing a comprehensive digital strategy but on an important strategic area: Prioritizing the digital investments Given that digital technologies permeate into different areas in an organiza...

Most organizations have embarked on digital transformation to capture customer value – both internal employees and external customers. These digital transformation projects address some business objective such as improving user experience, improving collaboration, simplifying processes using digital technologies etc. In a traditional product-centric approach, we take the product/application as a given and then re-align processes to meet the product requirements. This could prove to be effective when the goal of the project is only automation and simplification. However, the digital transformation project has additional objectives – namely improving user experience and collaboration. To this end, it requires a different mindset – It requires project leaders to think from an end-user perspective and not just from product perspective. Developing a user-centric approach will be extremely critical if buyers are not consumers of a product/service. There can be a huge “expectation...

‘Implementing a mobile-first strategy’ There are several objectives for an organization to embark on a mobile first strategy: Improve User experience, collaboration, employee engagement, real-time information etc. The ultimate goal for all these objectives is to improve productivity of the organization. Moreover, the eco-system to pursue a mobile first strategy is near perfect in several areas. The enterprise software vendors like Oracle, SAP, and IBM are building applications or revamping their existing product lines to be social, mobile, analytical, and cloud based. On the other hand, the usage of smart devices such as iPads and Tablets has been on the rise. The changes in eco-system coupled with productivity gains prompt the C-Suite executives to develop mobile-first strategy.   ‘Challenges in implementing a mobile first strategy’ Product Maturity: Most technological products go through the following five-stages: ‘Concept’, ‘Prototype’, ‘Minimum Viable P...