Digital disruption is the shift that occurs when advances in technology affect an industry’s business model and impact the value of its goods and services. While this isn’t a new concept (when was the last time you went to a Blockbuster?), digital disruption has become more and more urgent in recent years as the digital
Digital disruption is the shift that occurs when advances in technology affect an industry’s business model and impact the value of its goods and services. While this isn’t a new concept (when was the last time you went to a Blockbuster?), digital disruption has become more and more urgent in recent years as the digital landscape continues to change at a rapid rate.
To see the impact of digital disruption, just look at the grocery retail industry. Between e-commerce and robotic fulfillment centers, the technological landscape of this market looks very different than it did even five years ago.
So how do you deal with digital disruption to ensure your company doesn’t fall behind?
1.) Imagine the Ideal Business Model
This seems like an idealistic question, but hear us out: if you could design your ideal business model, what would it be?
In a perfect world, what would your salesperson’s day-to-day look like? How would you generate, track and respond to leads? What information would you want to see on your dashboard? What metrics would be valuable that you currently don’t have?
This “pie-in-the-sky” thinking has a point: it helps you understand the direction you want your company to go in the long-term. Knowing these goals helps you better prepare towards meeting them, and helps you understand which directions will help you reach them and which will not. Keep these ideals in mind as you move forward, so that you’re consistently moving towards the best future for your company.
2) Embrace the Integration of Processes and Data
With the above in mind, investigate your current processes and ask yourself if they’re fully optimized. This is easier said than done; it can be hard to re-assess something that has worked for your company for decades. Still, it’s important to audit your systems and ensure everything is optimized.
For example, there are plenty of systems out there that approach different things—you could be paying for an ERP, CRM, and CMS—but if they don’t integrate in any way, you’re missing out on a powerful tool: data integration. Without this, you can’t easily combine data from various sources to gain larger insights on both your clients and your company performance.
When it comes to the integration of processes, it’s useful to ask yourself the following questions:
- Am I using my current technology and platforms to their fullest potential?
- It’s common for CRMs especially to be under-utilized when they have the potential to be powerful lead generation tools.
- Am I paying too much for multiple systems, when an alternative exists that can achieve the same results with lower overhead?
- For example, the Project Management Software we use at Dream Factory includes a chat feature, so we no longer had to invest in using Slack.
- Do I have ways of integrating my current processes, and if not, what would be the most efficient way to achieve data integration?
- Without this, you’ll lack valuable insights about your company and your clients that can spearhead your marketing and sales efforts.
3) Understand the Logic of New Competitors
It’s easy to dismiss start-ups that emerge seemingly out of nowhere, especially when they’re focusing on an industry that you’ve specialized in for decades. However, when an entrant introduces a different business model to your market, they’ve often found a way to either offer the same products and services at a lower price, create higher customer satisfaction or better use their existing resources.
The question is: how?
Examine what it is about your competition that allows them to adjust their business model in this way, and then determine which assumptions that have prevented you from trying a similar approach. While it’s possible their ideas aren’t sustainable, it’s also equally possible they’ve stumbled on a new way of revolutionizing your products and services.
If it’s the latter, you can’t afford to let that go unnoticed.
4) Be Patient and Plan Ahead
There is no “quick fix” to digital disruption. The best way to weather it is to plan ahead with a clearly thought-out strategy for the future, while paying attention to everything that’s going on around you in your industry.
Carefully and deliberately choose which technologies to invest in based on what will give you the best return-on-investment and integrate the most with your proven processes. Don’t just choose the flashiest new interface at the lowest price; select something with the financial backing and forward-thinking potential to last your company a long time.
Investing in new technology and processes can be a painful and frustrating transition, but it pays off in the long-term by streamlining your processes and giving you insights into what your clients expect and what the tangible results of your efforts are. If you do this right the first time, and don’t rush, the result should be that you’re much closer to your dream business model.
5) Don’t Assume You Have to Go Alone
Is this all overwhelming to think about? Wish you had someone to bounce ideas off with? Call us up at Dream Factory.
We’re solution-agnostic marketing agency. That means we work with whatever technology our clients feel comfortable with so that we can develop and create custom marketing solutions for your unique industry and business model. Whether it’s SharpSpring or HubSpot, we can support our clients with marketing automation that aligns with their sales, and we work to assist you in scaling your business for growth.