Going Digital: A Company’s Competitive Edge

By: Joemar Matulac

“WE apply new technologies to existing experiences to deliver game-changing innovative solutions and use digital technology to change businesses inside and out, transforming not only processes but mindsets too”  – The BIO Agency, an award-winning digital agency based in London.

We cannot deny that we are experiencing digital revolution today, knowing that the development and advancement of digital technology started with one fundamental idea, the internet.

Today, digital innovation is important in every organization. Businesses can automate internal business operations to do things efficiently and at a lesser cost, find new ways to engage consumers, and bring new products and services to the market.

In driving digital innovation, businesses are changing market conditions which mean that they are targeting around a moving market. And with different startups popping up all over, competition is increasing. They need a faster path to transform their innovative new ideas into winning applications. This is where digital innovation platforms come in.

Most of the existing businesses want to innovate in order to improve operational efficiency and to deliver value to their customers by integrating digital technology — that’s the concept of digital transformation.

According to The Bio Agency, who delivers customer experience-led digital transformation, they also consider digital transformation as cultural change because it shifts a company’s mindset to a new way of thinking. It begins and ends with how you think.

Digital innovation and transformation can be for every business, regardless of the industry and size, aiming to be competitive, profitable, and to create products and services that will satisfy consumers.

There are three identified prerequisites in digital innovation and transformation; people, process and platforms.

Businesses must have the right people who are passionate about delivering business value, highly focused in formulating digital solutions for complex business problems, and with a mission and goal aligned with the company’s own vision.

Having an agile and effective process leverage the company in driving digital innovation and transformation. Also, through a thorough repetition of the process, it will help the company to show progress and collect market feedback.

Find the right technology that empowers your people and reinforces your process. Businesses need a unified platform that can manage the entire application, including program management, team collaboration, rapid application development, instant cloud deployment, and application management.

If there are prerequisites in digital innovation and transformation, there is also this rule: the business operation should already be efficient prior to the implementation of digitization and transformation. Automation and digitization of the business process of an inefficient operation will just worsen the situation; they should be laid down strategically with policies in place.

A well-defined process and policies are the best use cases and basis of requirements for the automation and digitization. All other things will follow including innovation and transformation.

As the great William Henry Gates III said, “the first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.”

A lot of people are afraid of change. However, with it being constant, we don’t have a choice but to adapt to it. In fact, we will hardly notice that we are being directed to it — digital technology, for example.

As society’s being obsessed with the latest technology, social media, and applications with the intention of having a convenient life, it can also advance and improve the relationship between brands and consumers, helps make better marketing decisions, have business operations under control, and become a company’s competitive edge.

Joemar Matulac is an experienced IT technical consultant and system developer with 10+ years of experience in managing technical teams and developing/designing/architecting web 2.0 and mobile-enterprise solutions in various platforms for a broad range of industries. He is currently working as Business Development Officer at Satellite GPS Asset Management and Tracking System, Inc. bridging the gap between business needs and technology.