It is no secret that technology is rapidly changing the global commerce environment. Several companies are now being forced to adopt digital strategies to maintain relevance among a more dynamic and aware consumer base. So, what should organizations keep in mind while planning for digital transformation?

First, let’s take a broader view at disruption and understand the factors that lead to disruption. There are arguably three primary reasons why some industries are more prone to disruption than others:

• One or few major players with minimal competition

• Slow evolution of traditional business practices

• Minimal to no technology adoption

A digital strategy is now imperative for companies looking to delay or perhaps avoid disruption, enabling the bolstering of traditional strategies with technological core competencies. Keeping that in mind, what is the advantage of a digital strategy? For the most part, these three:

• Establishing a new line of business

• Creating a digital perspective of an existing business

• Ability to leverage emerging technologies across industries

A great example of integrating digital into an existing business would IKEA’s Place application, which allowed prospective furniture buyers visually see how specific items would look in their home. The impact of such an application is two-fold. One, customers will use it as a home-décor tool, building recognition for the IKEA brand and secondly, boost revenues for the company by not only augmenting sales but by minimizing returns.

There are many elements to digital strategy but there are some more important than others. Below are a few elements that form the foundation of a digital strategy, quite easily making or breaking any mobile initiative adopted by an organization.

Technology

Well-crafted digital strategies enable companies to understand, design and deliver consumer centric solutions that deliver better performance and value to their end users. These solutions also need to encompass every facet of technology relevant to an organization and most importantly, it’s customer.

Back in 2011, Tesco (a leading global grocery retailer) merged the digital and physical world by understanding their consumers, their lifestyles and preferences. Launched in Seoul, the grocery chain put up life-seize image displays of a range of common grocery products at a few subway stations in the city. Each image had an assigned QR code to it which could be scanned via a mobile device to add it to a virtual basket. Consumers could do this while waiting for their train on the subway platform. The groceries were then delivered to the customer’s preferred address by the end of the day. This convenience driven solution leveraged the QR code technology of the time and inserted itself into the daily routine of the customer – making it truly innovative strategy (again, for the time).

This initiative highlighted not only the need for approach digital strategies from a consumer’s perspective (versus a business’ perspective) but also leveraging the technology of today. Tesco was able to identify a gap that existed for consumers and delivered a solution encased in both, convenience and surprise. This strategy was also piloted a year later by P&G at a popular subway station in Toronto.

Digital Experience and Design

However, convenience alone should not be at the forefront of a digital strategy. Numerous digital elements boost customer engagement, retention and subsequently, revenues. Digital differentiation is driven by a combination of design, execution and experience. While broad in nature, the integration of these three is imperative to the success of a digital strategy. Falling behind on any one can adversely impact a strategy, sending teams back to square one, resulting in lost time and revenues.

A strategy around the digital assets that are customer facing need to incorporate a consistent sense of experiences, across platforms. Digital design needs not only to be aesthetic, but also intuitive enough to accelerate the solution being provided to the customer. Empathy plays a strong role in the execution of a digital strategy, helping teams understand the consumer’s perspective to design a better experience.

Further, the seamless execution of a digital strategy can also be possible through the integration of quality assurance and tests through its development, opposed to at the final delivery of a product or service.

Customer Data

The traditional customer journey has been replaced by a digital voyage, opening a treasure trove of opportunity that can be pilfered by personalizing each journey. Adopting and implementing a digital strategy goes far beyond adjusting to the new journey but includes access to detailed customer data. Analysis of this customer data can provide a new solution based on brand-user interactions and not on technological capabilities within an organization. The advancement of technology ensures that there are virtually infinite capabilities, it is just a question of imagining them.

Further, data can be utilized to better define customer targeting, through choosing demographic and other segmenting data that best fit a company’s product. Further, with customer data being measured through the digital journey, teams can now better understand attrition and develop strategies to combat it. These steps within a digital strategy eventually leads to the creation of new products and services, adapted to customer needs and behavior – tying back to creating to new business capabilities.

Scalability

Lastly, the scalability of a digital strategy incorporates future changes and modifications that may be needed in changing business environments. Designing a strategy that is limited to a single platform does not serve either business or customer well. Multi-platform adoption, though now obvious, can be overlooked by companies. More importantly, with many organizations partnering with third-party platform providers, it is crucial that these partners can scale at pace with the organization.

Digital platforms need to be designed in such a way that they enable quicker and more accurate responses within an organization and not just for consumers. This makes a service instantly scalable across platforms and regions. Given the increased diminishing of virtual borders across countries, organizations need to prepare for scaling not only in terms of features but also the number of users on their platform.