Great question. Let’s not bore ourselves with textbook definitions, instead let’s take a look outside your business door at what is going on in the world today.
Today, everyone you see has the internet literally in the palm of their hands. When we say the world is transacting at the speed of thought, we mean it! If anyone has an idea they only have to go as far as the end of their arm to validate it.
Also, we see massive changes taking place in all industries. Jetsons-like pizzas arriving by flying machines or cars driving themselves or robots to clean your house are no longer laughable cartoons. These things have arrived.
Pretty much anything manual and repetitive stands in the firing line of being automated during this round of business evolution, and the last businesses to adapt are unlikely to be fit enough to survive. Even if there are aspects of your business that cannot be automated yet, it is imperative that you are as digitally-ready as you can be.
We’ve divided digital readiness into five categories. There are always more ways to categorise digital readiness considerations, and even more considerations to list than is possible in this article, but this is a great place to start:
- Digital Marketing; When someone reaches for their device at the end of their arm to validate an idea that concerns your business, will it be your business they find? Hopefully the significance of this question speaks for itself!
- Cloud services; Are you still re-inventing the wheel? If it’s not your core business, are you outsourcing automation to a specialist? If not, you are more than likely paying too much to do a job for a substandard outcome.
- Core business automation; If no-one else does this the way you do and you do it the same way every time, then its time to invest and automate. The cost will pay for itself many times over.
- Business continuity; Will your business survive a disaster? An automated business in the cloud is just that. It can be moved, copied, accessed from anywhere at any time, unaffected by disaster.
- Mobility; How much time does your business lose while staff take notes out of office, drive back to their desk and transcribe, only to find details are forgotten and typing errors abound? If only your business was able to operate where the transaction takes place.
Want to know how well you’re doing? Head over to our new digital readiness quiz on our website and spend 2 minutes on 5 questions to see how you business rates. https://davis.systems/ready-digital-economy/