To be competitive in today’s market landscape, your organisation needs to be more digital—but what does this actually mean?
For decades now, the world of business has been becoming more and more digital. By this, we don’t only mean that every organisation uses computer hardware and software. It’s also moving beyond using the internet for digital marketing and e-commerce.
Recently, when leaders talk about transforming their organisations to be more digital, they will be thinking in terms of digitising everyday processes across the business. This will involve getting to grips with the company’s data about its operations and customers—managing and consolidating data to make it available for wider business usage and intelligent analytics to unlock new business value.
They will be using automation, machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) to reduce or remove manual steps and improve process efficiency. Organisations will also be migrating systems to the cloud to enable agility, scalability and cost reduction.
Now, organisations are entering the era of the digital product. This does not necessarily mean that the products a company offers
to customers will no longer be physical. Rather we are referring to the digital products or systems that organisations create and use to run aspects of their business or to serve customers.
In business terms, a digital product is an application, online service, software tool or digitised process. More specifically, a digital product creates value and solves a problem for the business that creates it, for its employees or for its customers.
What qualifies as a digital product can range widely—from a platform like Google Search, Netflix or Spotify—to an online mortgage calculator or customer support tool.
Such digital products could include transactional web platforms, cross-platform mobile apps or specialist workplace tools—enabled by powerful back-end systems, middleware and application programming interfaces (APIs). These products may be customised versions of off-the-shelf solutions—but are increasingly created bespoke by organisations and their digital consultancies.
