What constitutes or distinguishes a digital-first company?
First of all, we must know that digital-first companies understand that technology is a key strategic advantage and accept the continuous change that comes with it, giving priority to digital experiences and technology in their main business strategy, innovating and improving their digital offerings, in order to differentiate themselves from the competition.
These companies focus on creating a unified and easy-to-use digital experience for all parties between customers, employees, sellers and suppliers, a 360-degree conceptual approach on where they need to be and how the world will be in the next five to ten years.
How to make the most of new advances and technological innovations?
It is important to note that it is a matter of vision because change management is the core of why a digital transformation is initiated on the understanding of technological investment. There are a lot of different tools on the Web 3.0 but getting the wrong mix can actually be counter-productive because it is not just about building a website.
This is why it is really discouraging for many business leaders who want to do it right but are horrified by what it means in terms of additional things they have to understand and do right, different from their actual business model, something really important for organizations because the investment of time, energy and human capital needs a return or a long-term benefit and in many ways it becomes a deficit in which you need to go back and re-equip. “I call it going back to the boxes. It's like being in a Formula One race. You could be at the front of the pack and your tire blows out and suddenly you're back in the boxes and it's really back to the beginning” says our CEO, Marc Charalambous.
What are the best practices?
Business and technological objectives must be closely related to achieve the best results. Technology should be seen as a valuable asset to optimize resources and increase the effectiveness of each organization without losing sight of the return on investment, risk, scalability potential as the company grows, etc. For example with Expresia, our own DXP, companies can opt for a pay-as-you-use model, helping to ensure that technology does not become, say, a financial burden for the company.
A true digital-first company understands the importance of investing in long-term solutions that provide competitive advantages, properly evaluating the technologies they choose based on those benefits, migrating the conversation from technology to the sustainability of a complex ecosystem that must evolve over time, just look at what has happened in the last three months with ChatGPT and AI.
365 API driven
Digital transformation is not a new concept because it has been happening for the last 25 years since the Internet; today it is important to see it from a more technical perspective than most people know because eventually digital-first companies must end up being 365 API driven to prepare for any future technologies that they can take advantage of to get a positive ROI.
A digital-first company needs to act like an organism, but a node on the network that is agnostic and can talk to anybody. It can talk to payment processors, it can answer questions. It is basically an API, and your business and your domain space needs to be 100% API driven without exception.
“If you're driving down the wrong road, at some point you're going to have to turn around and get back on the right road”, Marc Charalambous.
A digital asset is like real estate
When a building or land is acquired, close to 90% of the time it is revalued, which turns it from an expense into an investment, likewise digital-first companies must get a return on technology. The future of this digital universe that we are creating are long-term digital assets that scale and grow in value.
Expresia, our unique, infinitely scalable digital experience SaaS platform (DXP), has the ability to synthesize and facilitate the evolution of any digital-first company by centralizing content management, e-commerce, the ability to build applications, code management, IDE, data processing and personalization of experiences. At Backbone we have clients who have been working with us since 2009 and although they are still on the same genesis platform, it has evolved in parallel to their specific needs in different markets such as finance, mining or government; they are not technology companies, they use technology because the commercial approach is the most important.
Expresia offers a solution to large-scale problems with a very low entry cost, being this a service like electricity because companies do not have to buy a ton of electricity, at the beginning they need a little but later when the business grows they will eventually need a greater amount. Our clients can start to scratch the surface of Expresia with the construction of a website, knowing that it can be scaled towards a vision that can fully integrate their company with all their customers, workers and suppliers. Is your company ready to become a digital-first? Contact us now by clicking here and let's start your digital transformation now.