The digital strategy bridges the gap between digital customers and digital processes. The end result is your digital business. How does it all fit together?
What is a digital strategy?
The digital strategy describes and determines the direction of all of a company's digitization projects. The projects vary from company to company. However, they all have one thing in common: they help shape the anticipated digital transformation.
The desire for digitalization is evident everywhere. This energy must be channeled in the right direction. This requires a clear structure for systematic and efficient transformation.
The ongoing goal is to maintain a strong market position and even gain a competitive advantage by outperforming competitors in the digital arena.
This goes hand in hand with an increase in digital maturity, which reflects the current state of digitization in the business model, processes, and products or services.
The basis of a digital strategy is the corporate strategy. This reciprocal relationship gives rise to an action plan with targets and achievable budgets.
Why do I need a digital strategy? And what happens without one?
Both managers and employees can roughly imagine what the added value of digitalization might be. Many have their own ideas about how to implement it. However, without a strategy that everyone can follow, there will be a lot of confusion.
The two perspectives of digital business
The path to digital business should be viewed from two perspectives:
On the one hand, the focus is on the product or service and its accessibility. Here, all points of contact with the customer are taken into account. This is therefore the external focus, the view of externally perceptible added value for the customer.
On the other hand, digitization is also imminent internally. Processes have optimization and automation potential that should be exploited. This primarily concerns efficiency issues in terms of time and financial expenditure, but also genuine process innovations.
A digital strategy is worthwhile in order to master this balancing act.
Figure 1:“Straightforward” work with a digital strategy | isr.de
Benefits of a digital strategy
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Overall corporate perspective:
A strategy takes the entire company into account. Departments work together efficiently, minimizing connection problems and media breaks, for example. The digital strategy plays a role in the overall corporate strategy.
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Pooling resources:
Once the direction has been set, all energy can be focused on achieving the goal. Aligning departments and measures enables objectives to be achieved quickly and capacities to be used economically.
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Transformation to a digital business:
Through external and internal focus, both digital processes and the digital customer experience are redesigned. This enables a company to position itself across all channels as an agile, responsive digital enterprise.
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Maintaining competitiveness:
Effective digitalization means greater efficiency within the company and increased customer satisfaction thanks to smooth, fast interactions. The digitalization efforts of competitors can only be offset and even surpassed through proactive measures.
The advantages can also be found in the Springer book "Consulting and Digitalization—Opportunities, Challenges, and Digitalization Strategies for the Consulting Industry" (see here).
Digitization projects are diverse and can quickly descend into utter chaos due to well-intentioned individual attempts at improvement. A digital strategy combines these ambitious forces into a targeted bundle. How exactly can we imagine a digital strategy?
Corporate strategy, digital strategy, and IT strategy: Who actually does what? An orchestrated collaboration
Corporate strategy, digital strategy, and IT strategy are interdependent. None can exist without the others. To digitize your company profitably, all three components must work together. Due to their overlaps, it is often difficult to distinguish between the three strategies. How do they fit together?
Figure 2: The structure of corporate strategy, digital strategy, and IT strategy | isr.de
The corporate strategy sets the direction for all activities within the company. This also includes the digital orientation of the organization.
The actual implementation of digital innovations is obviously in the hands of IT and IT strategy. As the digital share of all business processes grows, so too does the influence and strategic relevance of IT infrastructure. IT strategy is the enabler, the facilitator, for the digital projects of corporate strategy.
Digital strategy serves as the link between these two fields. It lies between IT and corporate strategy. It attempts to combine their respective characteristics in order to develop innovative processes and even new business areas.
"However, digital transformation is not just a matter for senior management, but concerns every single person."
Birger van der Spek
Developing and implementing a digital strategy is not a specific project for a task force within the company. It is a joint effort in which management, with IT at its side, strives for transformation. This should be realistic and achievable with comprehensible measures.
We must not forget the people involved. When you think it through to its logical conclusion, a new digital structure may also mean a cultural change. Employees are the ones who will ultimately use the changed system and need to feel comfortable with it. Their understanding and motivation are therefore crucial.
I'm sure I need a strategy, but what are the steps that will lead me to it? Where do I start?
Your digital strategy in just 6 steps
What is a digital roadmap?
Maintaining control and an overview is crucial for making informed, sustainable decisions. That's why we have the digital roadmap. It's the navigation system for digital transformation. It shows me where I am on my journey. Where I came from, where I am now, and where I'm headed.
We plan and prioritize specific digitization activities (your digital agenda) across departments as part of a digital roadmap. This roadmap compiles potential initiatives, projects, and measures that are suitable for pursuing the digital strategy. Strict measurability and constant consideration of ROI apply here. This prevents non-targeted initiatives and demonstrates the tangible effects of your own efforts.
Figure 3: Designing the strategy based on a digital agenda/digital roadmap | isr.de
Full of energy?
Cihan Klingsporn
Senior Account & Marketing Manager
Business Process Automation
cihan.klingsporn@isr.de
+49(0)151 422 05 471
