In a digital world and experience framework, what kind of game does your company and employees tend to play?
When company decides to enter the market it must decide, at the same time, what kind of interactions it wants to have with (customers, suppliers, employees, competitors) and what kind of experiences wants to offer. All of which is independent of whether the company has a strategic plan in the short, medium or long term or simply that it does not have to be adaptive and fast to its immediate environment. In this way, company decides the type of game that wants to play, at the same time, decides to comply with the rules and the flows. Once the game is decided, the company can´t be changing immediately. Let me mix these ideas.
When some businesses (X) want to digitize (d) they have, among others, three big ways:
1-Start with digitize their inputs “I” (in-vision), “I”d←→X
2-Digitize their output “O” (out-vision) X←→d”O”
3-Both at the same time (360º vision) “I”d←→X←→d”O”
The starting point will determine the result.
Digitization is like a game. The key is to know before which game you want to play. Golf player selects the best suit golf sticks, according to the distance to go and the conditions of the environment (among others things). It makes a progressive approach ball towards its hole, test and error using the best technology of backwards forward. Golf player is obsessed with continually improving his swing. But the hole does not speak, has no answers and all efforts are centered on the player and his processes. Regarding this point, there are some companies that are determined to digitize from that point, with a short look. The digital strategy of the company pivots on launching the product towards the customer as accurately as possible for this to buy. Are those that follow the service paradigm “fire and forget” (I sell you a thing…I hope I never hear from you again). But the progressive deployment of technology will force them to change (Weichselbaum, 2015). Customer wants something else.
On the other hand, we have the companies that are digitizing as a tennis game. They start to play from the client and go back in search of offering value, adapting their system in order to reduce the gap between digital customer and analogical of their company. This type of game requires observing and deciding depending on the response of the “opponent” (customer) but does so from a 180º vision without looking back. It has a response orientation without fully analyzing the previous processes. Their advantage is the speed but its weakness; lack of efficiency. This firms needs to think that in the future the key point of companies will be to use technology rather as a catalyst with the goal of increasing and enhancing their capabilities with customers and workers (Technology Vision, 2017). This type of companies lacks integration. Customer vision without good processes is not enough. They should know that digital strategy it’s not just about technology.
Finally, we have cases where the two perspectives are tackled at the same time in a sort of 360º vision as in the baseball. Here the game is back to front, front to behind and forward again. The company elaborates from front-to-back and back-to-front all customer response. The process is continuous, dynamic, productive and customer oriented. Why? Because new context is here and firm in order to compete in the digital age, they must improve the customer experience while at the same time achieving efficiency in their processes too (Gil et al, 2017).
So, when you begin digitizing your company, keep in mind where you start. If you do from a golf vision you will get efficiencies until your product will be commoditized, because the efficiencies themselves and by themselves in the long run will be sold out. If you only look at offering value to your client and nothing else, your inefficiencies absorb you and stop being competitive.
But, if you do it from a 360º perspective, long run vision and progressive process you will deliver a true customer and employees experience, sustainable with impact on your efficiency improvement, your best revenue and most importantly, with continuous innovation flow. That is what digitization is all about, applying 360º technologies throughout all the organization chain with special focus on customer, processes and employees, “360º continuum”.
