Digital Disruption Is Here. Are You Ready to Transform?
This transformation is not just impacting companies selling their products or services to consumers, commonly referred to as a B2C scenario. Even organizations that sell their wares to other businesses in a B2B setting are enhancing existing connections and creating new ones, sometimes dis-intermediating parties and at other times creating new intermediaries.
Take, for example, a contract research organization (CRO). A CRO provides support to the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device industries in the form of research services outsourced on a contract basis. Many CROs provide clinical-study and clinical-trial support for drugs and/or medical devices. CROs that specialize in clinical-trials services may offer their clients the expertise of moving a new drug or device from its conception to FDA/EMA marketing approval, without the drug sponsor having to maintain a staff for these services.
Imagine a CRO clinical-trial process in a non-digital world. Numerous in-person meetings, conference calls, paper trails, manual reviews, etc., just to exchange information between the drug sponsor and the CRO. Then add on top of this the exchange of information from the CRO to the FDA/EMA organization, and back to the drug sponsor. Would this be an effective use of time and resources? Imagine the complexity of maintaining compliance and meeting regulatory requirements. Which documents are being managed by which organization? How are they being tracked? Where are they in the cycle?
Now consider the benefits a digital-first approach could have. Using apps that quickly network systems between the drug sponsor and CRO could streamline the exchange information, while maintaining compliance with regulatory requirements. Providing apps that are simple to use ensures the workforce on both sides can be trained quickly and easily, reducing costs and time-to-market for both the drug sponsor and the CRO. The ultimate result is a digital enterprise with greater business agility—more time, resources, and dollars to be put toward innovation, new products, and new business models.
Sounds all well and good, but how do you get there? A defining characteristic of digital enterprises and companies in transition is a digital platform. The digital enterprise requires expertise in and reliance on a set of technologies that together enable digital commerce, digital work, and digital interactions between companies and customers.
Gartner came to a similar conclusion in its October 2015 report, “Building the Digital Platform: The 2016 CIO Agenda”. The report explains that “a platform provides the business with a foundation where resources can come together—sometimes quickly and temporarily, sometimes in a relatively fixed way—to create value…The value comes largely from connecting the resources, and the network effects between them.”
Becoming a Digital Enterprise
Most believe that the digital platform includes social, mobile, analytics, and cloud, as well as content management and process tools. While all are essential, enterprise content management (ECM) uniquely addresses three key components of the business—IT, Business and People—allowing an organization to become dramatically more efficient, while extracting insights from content that actively engage digital customers. ECM has traditionally been critical to transforming IT and business, but today’s ECM solutions need to place heavier emphasis on value-added “People” interactions, whether it’s with employees, partners, or customers.
More and more companies recognize the necessity of building a digital platform, and it’s why companies like Starbucks have added a new position to the executive suite: Chief Digital Officer. Adam Brotman, CDO at Starbucks, is responsible for web, mobile, social media, digital marketing, Starbucks Card and loyalty, e-commerce, Wi-Fi, Starbucks Digital Network, and emerging in-store technologies—combining all of these initiatives into a digital platform that is at once unique to the organization and closely aligned with the strategy of other forward-thinking companies.
It’s not easy, but becoming a digital enterprise offers an opportunity for strong, long-term growth through new business models, new revenue streams, and ultimately more satisfied and engaged customers. Companies that truly transform themselves through digital technology will become the new leaders, the “built to last” organizations of the future. By contrast, laggards in digital transformation will experience rapid market disruption and will have to become highly reactive just to survive.
So, rather than avoiding change, embrace and define how a disrupted business model will work for you and your customers. And if you don’t know where to start, there’s a Digital Maturity model to benchmark your company’s readiness for digital transformation. Digital disruption is here; transform your organization before it disrupts your business.
EMC ENTERPRISE CONTENT DIVISION: EMC’s Enterprise Content Management Division is a global leader in ECM applications, solutions, and services that enable digital transformation and unlock the value of content. To learn more, go to www.emc.com/ecm, visit our blog at http://sparkblog.emc.com, or phone: 1-866-438-3622.