Palo Alto – May 29, 2020 – In my admittedly simplistic and bifocal view of the world, just 2 types of companies remain…

1) Digital natives – companies that were born digital – think the tech giants and quite frankly all of the start-ups seeking to become a unicorn before their headcount tops 20.

2) Companies undergoing a Digital Transformation – let’s face it: you are hard-pressed today to find a traditional company willing to admit that they have not embarked on a digital transformation journey, you will find it equally tricky to find a company that has achieved their digital vision.

10 Digital Transformation Do’s and Don’ts

Don’t try to compete directly with one or more digital natives – they will probably win

Do take as the foundation of your digital strategy that which you are good or preferably best at in the non-digital world and add digital features. The goal is to differentiate by adding digital features to the product, to the buying or the service experience. Digital natives probably won’t try to compete with you here.

Don’t make the mistake of believing that all digital features are a good thing. Digitalization should either give the customer something additional in value or it should reduce the costs of your operations.

Do use agile methods, minimum viable products, rapid prototyping to experiment rapidly, preferably in close collaboration with your customers to find out quickly what works for you and them.

Don’t get stuck in pilot purgatory, fail fast, and fail often. Stop ideas that do not work or even appear not to work.

Do scale up rapidly what works. This part is not easy, you will need to invest and you will need additional people.

Don’t hire from a digital-native company and get annoyed when those people speak a strange language. Your goal should be to understand them, not to re-educate them.

Do ensure that your sales teams are over-trained and over-incentivized to sell your new digital offerings. Left to their own devices, they will sell what they are best at, which is what they know!

Do consider using machine learning and AI but preferably in combination with your own in-house expertise in a hybrid approach. If done well, you will have a reasonably good chance of beating the digital natives and their pure AI.

Don’t give up!

To learn more please contact:

Andrew Bright
Executive Director
Woodside Capital Partners International LLC
[email protected]
(650) 785-9573