The digital revolution demands speed! It is not just about transformation, it is about digital acceleration. Optimizing processes and gaining a competitive edge by rapidly adopting new technologies!
In this blog post we talk a bit about digital acceleration and what it means for your business.
Content:
2. The differences between digital transformation and digital acceleration
Digital transformation builds new business opportunities, while digital acceleration ensures business processes work faster and more efficiently, giving you a competitive edge.
Rather than taking months or years for these digital adoptions, digital acceleration focuses on shortening that time-to-value by innovating much faster.
Digital acceleration is very simply a digital transformation but in overdrive. And with the right strategy for your business, you can bring that acceleration into seriously high speed!
We need to think about that no matter what industry you are in... what service or products you provide… or who your target market is. Today every company is a technology company. I think this is something that many businesses tend to forget, tech is right here all around us.
Customer expectations are different in today’s new digital-first world, meaning that companies that would have never been considered “tech” companies 10 years ago, now have to be implementing technology regularly just to be on an even playing field in their industry.
Important is also that every company's digital transformation process is unique to its business, how it operates and of course its organization. Digital acceleration is the integration of digital technology that results in accelerated business growth. A successful acceleration identifies a business’s growing pains and then utilizes software and digitization, to automate and streamline these processes to make them more efficient. This shift is vital for staying relevant in the digital era and finding long-term success.
Digital acceleration is in short, just a way of ensuring your competitive advantage.
I think the basic definition of digital transformation is that you use technology to improve your performance and processes. But when it comes to digital acceleration you are keeping pace with technological advances at an exponential level.
Here are a couple of examples of the differences.
|
|
Digital transformation |
Digital acceleration |
|
Speed |
One to three years digital transformation strategy. |
Consists of a constant series of sprints – need to change quickly. |
|
Culture |
New ways of working – digital mindset. |
Being flexible, focus on growth |
|
Structure |
New operating model |
Dynamic, fast changing. |
|
Technology |
Integrated platforms and data |
Modular, component-based structure |
|
Leadership |
Long term vision for a tech-oriented company |
Develop an organization that utilizes experimentation and rapid decision making. |
We are looking at a couple of key points for you and your business.
We start off with Innovation, one of the key drivers in a technology-oriented company. Digital acceleration empowers businesses by providing access to real-time data, new methods, and metrics, which provides you the way to identify new opportunities. Therefore, companies that embrace technology early and are flexible enough to adapt will be uniquely positioned to offer something their competitors can't.
Financial Savings, we all look at the money? Right?
Traditional software doesn't play well with modern business needs and processes. The information is often challenging to work with. It requires expensive software development, and it doesn't always make it easy for organizations to adapt to modern business practices. Digital acceleration is a low-cost, high-ROI solution to these issues. One key takeaway looking at the financials, is that we need to reduce labor costs. Currently, many highly skilled employees lose hours each day to repetitive, manual tasks that newer software and automation technology could be doing for a much lower cost.
Scalability – Going down, going up!
As businesses grow and expand to include new opportunities, their technology often gets in the way. It can't scale. Or, at least, it can't scale at the speed of business. New digital technologies such as cloud services allow businesses to scale up without significant interruptions or complex transitions.
Future proofing – What’s next?
We’ve seen a lot of things happening in the world around us the last couple of years. We have war, Covid, financial crisis and this will not be the last drastic change in the digital world or the business one. Consumer behavior can also drastically change the business ecosystem with the arrival of new technologies and societal trends. Companies that want not just to survive but develop in their new environment must learn to adapt quickly during periods of uncertainty.
Improved Decision-making.
Businesses make the best decisions they can with the information available to them at the time. If data is incomplete, fragmented, or just missing - they can’t support the decision making. In the worst case they might even corrupt information and contribute to horribly and costly mistakes. Data acceleration centralizes and integrates information, making it easier to generate reports, assess the impacts of changes, and even identify new products and services previously obscured by data silos.
We all love technology. Being in the business for almost 30 years now, I have seen things changing and I think we are just about touching at the starting point of the digital revolution. We need to change our way of thinking, adapt quicker, to create our competitive edge. Things are just moving faster, lets utilize most of the technologies.
There are many ways of integrating digital acceleration into your business strategy. You need to foster a digital culture, develop a roadmap with key technologies to support your way forward. Collaborate! Develop cross-functional teams! Monitor your progress! And in the end, just innovate... Constantly!
We love to talk about digital transformation and acceleration, get in touch with us and we’ll guide you forward.
/ Martin Sjöström - CEO 👋