Economies Of Speed Trumps Scale In Digital Transformation?

Vikas Agarwal

Technology and Engineering

COVID-19 has brought forward innumerous changes in the way the world works. From corporates to small businesses, we’ve observed a change in growth strategies and digital exposure.

Traditionally, we’ve followed a restricted form of presenting a business strategy. According to the economies of scale, we build a predicted outline of the ROI expected from a product’s production. The outcome isn’t left to guesswork and is decided before the launch of the product to ensure that a sum of profits is received in return.

However, with the pandemic affecting the way of life, businesses are no stranger to the changes introduced due to digital progress. As we slowly pass through the years of the pandemic, we progress towards an economy dependent on speed, not scale.

But what do we mean when we say that the world is progressing towards an economy of speed, you ask? It’s quite simple, actually. Ever since the world moved indoors, the expectations of clients have risen. The expectation now isn’t to predict the ROI to come out of a hefty strategy, the goal is to build a strategy on the go and evaluate the results as they occur.

In the digital world, there is no space for questions and doubts. The trends are growing fast and you’re expected to keep up. As a business or brand that’s competing in the market, you need to create the same (if not better) experience for your customer as the rest working on-ground.

To put it in a single statement – the customer of today enjoys the experience more than the product, what are you doing to live up to their wants?

But don’t just take our word for it! Let’s evaluate this further:

An idea whose time has come - the beginning of the digital age

When the lockdown first began, panic broke across all workspaces. Digital media, corporates, firms, etc. couldn’t even consider moving to a complete virtual workspace! “Do we even have the bandwidth to go digital?” “Half of our employees don’t have laptops/computers! How will they work?” and many more questions bothered both employees and employers.

However, when the need of the hour came, we were able to tackle it successfully. Every business moved digital, with many continuing to spread their workforce across the country and work from home. The comfort of a concept that would otherwise never have been approached was accepted and embraced with the hard work of many.

Besides the teamwork that followed the footsteps of working from home, innovations of digital team-building activities allowed everyone to stay connected through hardships. Other than staying together even from afar, digital innovations overtook the space with tech advancements in cybersecurity, AI, VR, deep tech, cloud and more.

It was easier to go digital because of the IT companies that were consistently at work and working on new ideas for an easier way of work for the rest of us. Services like Slack, Zoho and more allowed businesses to give a common ground to all employees for their work, while digital event planning software like Zuddl allowed companies like NASSCOM to carry out virtual events for DTC, the annual NPC and more.

Limitations were overtaken through innovation.

Worried that you missed the innovation bus?

The best part, possibly, of the times of today is the freedom it brings. If you’re still worried about not having caught up to the train of innovation soon enough, there’s no longer a need to worry.

Surely, it would’ve been much more difficult to catch the trends during traditional times, however, during COVID, content consumption has seen a rise of 44% in 2020 alone. The more you produce, the more you have the chance of visibility.

The current strategy of work is to embrace creativity and watch the results of your campaign as it goes live. The more people you reach, the more you get to analyse, overcome and achieve.

Innovation isn’t limited to the invention of a new product to solve the problem of the market – you can now optimize your product according to the needs of the market, today.

But how do you do this, you ask?

It’s simple. One of the most prominent examples we have of this ideology is that of Clubhouse. When Clubhouse was introduced to the masses, it was invite-only chat app available for iOs users. So while Clubhouse initiated the innovation of a completely new product for the market, they failed to reach the entirety of their potential audience.

When the market saw this, Twitter took over its potential audience through Twitter spaces. Ultimately, many ended up switching from Clubhouse to Twitter because of some of their friends only being able to use the product there.

Optimization overtook innovation

We all thought 2021 would be different, eh?

As mentioned earlier, the lockdown predicted the downfall of many and while it ended up being a painful reality for quite a lot of businesses, it also turned into an opportunistic drive for businesses that had only earlier dreamed of moving to a 100% digital lifestyle.

However, according to the trends that followed, we can see that the world optimized to a virtual lifestyle much more efficiently than expected. Many realized that going digital wasn’t just about allocating the right resources – it was about working effectively with empathy and to embrace a culture of teamwork and transparent communication.

Even though we were hoping for the pandemic to be closed last year, the sorrow continues. Luckily, we now know how to cope:

Through digital employee engagement and team bonding exercises through virtual events and virtual upskilling workshops
Staying updated with cybersecurity systems as well as a newfound job description in the profile of a security/privacy engineer
Introduction of digital support roles that help in gaining sales indirectly. Digital strategists, social media managers, lead development roles, marketing analytics managers and more are some of the newfound roles that can help in building a foolproof marketing strategy
Soft skills are the new black. Employers are no longer looking for a profile restricted to hard skills only. Since the customer’s experience and journey are now considered to be more important than the product itself, the need for an employee that knows their works around the customer is integral

So… what are the elements of a successful digital enterprise in today’s time?

The question on everyone’s mind – what determines success today? Is it easy enough to pen down? Or is it much more complex than it seems?

To be brutally honest, the success of a digital enterprise today depends on a lot more factors than ever before. However, what you can do is to consider the below-mentioned factors (at the very least)!

Business alignment

Without a doubt, optimizing your business according to modern needs is integral. Digital value can only be realised when all the necessary teams work in complete coordination to understand the needs of the hour. Be it software and business or creative and tech teams, it’s important to realise what the business needs and what changes could be coming in next.

Once you align your workforces, you will be able to see the changes in your overall system’s progress.

Speed of innovation

Coming down to the core subject of this blog, speed of innovation is the need of the hour. Quite literally – if you snooze, you lose. The key is to be able to place your business in line with all current trends through either innovation or optimization.

But wait, how do you do this?

Either you make your business flourish by building your own reliable IT architecture with a data platform you can rely on while modernizing your way of work and hiring the right talent needed for your organization, or, you leave it to us.

At GrowExx, we’re equipped with the essential infrastructure needed to help you catch up with trends and competitors. Whether it be about setting your cloud service or helping you work with dedicated development teams that are professionally trained to work with the speed of innovation, we’ve got you covered.

Talent & organization

At the end of the day, the success of any strategy comes down to your team and effective communication. Digital trends have risen as a result of an arsenal of teammates that know how to work together towards the betterment of their organization.

Through training, upskilling, leadership workshops and most of all, communication – you can build your business from the ground up, effectively.

So, what’s next?

The only question that’s left to ask yourself now is whether your business is matching up to the current trends of the world. Are you still following the economies of scale? Or have you made the switch to economies of speed? Or are you hoping to work with an agency that can give you the direction your business currently lacks?

The answer to your question can help determine how well-paced your future strategy can and should be. So we ask you one simple question – what’s next?

Vikas Agarwal

Vikas Agarwal is the Founder of GrowExx, a Digital Product Development Company specializing in Product Engineering, Data Engineering, Business Intelligence, Web and Mobile Applications. His expertise lies in Technology Innovation, Product Management, Building & nurturing strong and self-managed high-performing Agile teams.