Is Your Business a Digital Business?

Is Your Business a Digital Business? It Better Be!

If not, you’re likely to be edged out and become a dinosaur in a modern world.

To be fair today, today every business is a digital business. Do you use email? Accounting software? Do you do research online? Do you have an online store? The question really is: do you use technology to your best advantage? In a White Paper we published not too long ago entitled A Digital Business in a Digital World we quoted a recent article by Forrester Research that essentially said (it’s too long to quote in its entirety here) that over the next couple of years your company is either going to become a “digital master” or “digital prey”. (Click above to read the whole quotation.)

The reality is that in today’s world the small business is already at a disadvantage. Big box stores have gobbled up the market share of hardware stores, office supply companies and apparel retailers. Even your dentist may now be the employee of a large national chain and your local car dealer is now probably owned by a conglomerate of 300-500 dealerships.

How does technology help you?

In a modern business, technology is intertwined into virtually every phase of that business. R&D, production, sales, marketing, finance, HR, customer service. Using technology takes us to the next level in every one of these departments (and all the other not mentioned here.) It keeps costs in line, enables us to provide better customer/client service, reduces errors, and generally makes us more effective in every way.

IT – Are You Inside-Out or Outside-In?

In most companies, IT has traditionally been an “Inside-Out” function, meaning that your IT focus has been on supporting your business as it exists today. This is the case whether you have your own internal IT department or are using a third-party managed IT support provider. This is ok. Your IT people need to be focused on the problems of today. But there is great value in shifting some of that focus “outside-in” so that your IT people are looking at, adapting and strengthening the disruptive business models that your business becomes the predator, not the prey.

What does this mean? Let’s look at some extreme cases. First, as this piece was being written, we saw a TV segment that Blockbuster was down to its last store. From 9,100 stores with 84,000 employees to one store with about 10 people working. Disruptive business models killed it. NYC taxi medallions (the license to own a taxi) have fallen in value from over $1,000,000 to about $200,000 because of services like Uber and Lyft.

Less “blockbuster” moves companies can make to disrupt their businesses positively can be updating websites to make them more interactive, adding third party products lines, more efficient production through technology, R&D to improve products and services ahead of your competition, improved employee satisfaction and productivity, and saving money across the board.

As an Atlanta-based managed IT support company, here at DynaSis we have had more than 25 years-experience helping small to mid-sized companies grow through secure technology. Give us a call and we will be happy to explain how. 678-373-0716.