Time to Fix Your Digital Business Development Path

The internet has a big role and impact in the customers’ engagement with brands and services review. It is transforming the economics of marketing and making obsolete many of the function’s traditional strategies and structures. For marketers, the old way of doing business is unsustainable, nowadays the use of technology to radically improve performance or reach of enterprises – is becoming a hot topic for companies across the globe. Executives in all industries are using digital advances such as analytics, mobility, social media and smart embedded devices, and improving their use of traditional technologies such as ERP – to change customer relationships, internal processes, and value propositions

Consider this example: Not long ago, a car buyer would methodically go through several processes pare down the available choices until he arrived at the one that best met his criteria. 

In old school process which I name it "Analog Business" a dealer would reel him in and try to make the sale. The buyer’s relationship with both the dealer and the manufacturer would typically dissipate after the purchase. But today in all the digital process and technology, customers are promiscuous in their brand relationships: They connect with myriad brands—through new media channels beyond the manufacturer’s and the retailer’s control or even knowledge—and evaluate a shifting array of them, often expanding the pool before narrowing it
For instance, booking an appointment for your car maintenance entails calling the dealership and speaking with a person who uses scheduling software and checks a database for the necessary parts. 

In the Digital Business era, your car acts as a semi-autonomous agent on your behalf; alerting you and the dealer to the need for maintenance, scheduling the appointment, and ordering the necessary parts. It may even drive itself to the shop. 

So back in the good old days before the internet and social media there weren’t that many places you could complain, certainly not that publicly anyway
All complaints would largely be in the form of a phone call, a letter or maybe even an ad hoc visit, but your complaint was very much between you and them.  There was no public hanging for providing a bad service unless it got to the press. There was an element of being able to keep things quiet. 

Then along came the internet, review sites, forums, blogging and of course social media! Now there is no hiding place.  Forums and review sites gave people the chance to share their opinions and experiences but this still meant that your thoughts were largely hidden away.  

Social Media nowadays, such as Twitter or Facebook has allowed people to rant to an even bigger audience, example below shows how the technology has facilitate the communication channel with the services supplier to raise the complaint and get responds faster.

The use of digital business techniques, such as experience design, mobile and social media leverage, and information and systems integration across the enterprise can produce unified business and customer relationship views. There are several valuable initiatives underway in the industry today. These include product bundling and innovative stickiness-generating features, as well as advanced analytics for granular segmentation –

The Digital Business Development Path (see Figure 1) examines six different business era models from before the Web to after the Nexus of Forces (social, mobile, cloud, information) to help organizations understand their current state and assist CIOs in making the case for digital business.  Figure 1. Gartner’s Digital Business Development Path

Gartner predicts that by 2020, 75% of business will be transforming to digital businesses or preparing to become one. Based on Gartner digital business survey we deduce that only 22% of respondents defined themselves as already being a digital business. Most organizations, or 41%, see themselves as a digital marketing business, and 22% of companies remain Web businesses.  

Where is your organization today and where do you want it to be before your competitors?