Choosing The Right Digital Strategy

PODCAST: Listen to Kareem Tawansi and Brett Raven discuss how important it is to choose the right implementation partner when transitioning to the Cloud

Often in life, we don’t always see the big picture, even if we are looking for it. That sometimes comes down to not having the right tools to do this. This is definitely the case when it comes to creating/deploying and/or adopting new technology. So, when we think about innovating and/or transitioning our technology to The Cloud, while we often focus on so many of the technical and financial factors, before any of that is relevant, we need to be thinking about our Digital Strategy. What is it we are looking to achieve from a strategic perspective? Are we looking to increase our bottom line, reducing errors, mitigating risk, increasing customer and/or employee satisfaction? Whatever it is, we need to clearly identify it before we start on the journey of creating any new technology.

What Are our Measures of Success?
How do we know we have succeeded? Firstly, we must clearly identify our objectives in a measurable way. We then need to make sure we have everything in place to measure whether we are hitting our objectives. Far too often people do things by feel or instinct, while this can be a good starting point, it is nowhere near accurate enough to make significant business decisions against. Afterall, the technology choices we make now may affect our business for many years to come.

What is our Target Return on Investment?
And for most for-profit businesses, every dollar spent should map back to some form of return. We need to identify what kind of ROI we consider to be a success. Again, we need to have the tools in place to accurately measure that return.

What are the Business Threats from taking No Action?
Businesses are living, breathing entities, they never stay still, and as such, making the decision not to take action can be more detrimental than making a poor decision. It is for this reason that it’s important to understand what the impact on your business is by deciding not to innovate or modernize your technology. What are the threats posed by your competitors, what are the threats posed by your technology no longer being supported and what threats lie in the lack of a suitable platform for the next big service offering leap?

What it all boils down to
So, in summary, you need to align the technology being delivered with the business objectives that need to be met; you need to make sure you get all your measurement data right, so you can make all the right decisions and you need to make sure you are getting the expected return on your investment.

If you don’t have the right Digital Strategy in place, choosing the best partners, tech stack and/or vendors will be worth nothing. Ultimately, there is a very important piece that needs to be done upfront and it has to be done by you. Only you can identify and clearly articulate your strategy and the objectives that make it up.