Thinking of making the “Digital Leap” or even a full-on digital transformation to your business? It’s a noble and timely goal because regardless of how seemingly nontechnical your field might be if you are not considering digital transformation or leveraging IoT to optimize your business, your competitors either are, or will soon.
But, just because you have an idea for an app or have identified a problem you want to address through technology doesn’t mean you are ready to build.
Just as you wouldn’t hire a contractor to start building a new house before they have worked on choosing a lot, planning, design, features and what types of appliances and technologies they want in a house, you don’t want to begin a technological initiative without Research & Strategy. If you put extra time and definition in planning in the beginning, you will save money by magnitudes in the construction and implementation of your solution. It may be a 3 to 4 month period of heavy lifting, but once you are done, you can build with confidence.
If you don’t properly plan, you risk spending funds on a solution that does not change your business, and even worse, one that becomes an ongoing financial liability. If you’re interested in truly transforming your business to rise above the competition and provide your customers with better value, it is very likely that a Research & Strategy phase will save you money in the end.
Take a broad analytical look at what your customers are hiring you for and what they need, evaluate and analyze what it is you do best and how you can meet those needs – and even look at other seemingly unrelated industries that have gone through a transformation. If this task is already feeling daunting, that’s OK. At Metova we specialize in guiding companies and industries through digital transformation – from research and strategy to design, development, final implementation and ongoing maintenance.
Time after time we find that companies that have come to us, who may have attempted a digital transformation in the past, failed because they skipped Research & Strategy – the single most important step in ensuring a viable digital transformation that will delight your customers, propel your company above the competition and ensure a viable, and profitable future.
Wondering “what Research & Strategy really involves?” There is a lot to it, but we can handle the entire process, providing your company with invaluable insight and definition – even if you don’t need our help building and implementing your final solution.
For more detail and to see a list of key steps, timelines and deliverables, in Research & Strategy, see our follow-up article “Looking Before You Leap: What exactly is Research & Strategy?” HERE
