Digital core: why does business need it?

Today’s situation has raised the topic of the “digital core” for many companies. Some leaders were convinced that they did the right thing while forming it, others saw that it needed to be improved.

Some have not formed it at all. And there were many of them. That’s why I decided to pay attention to this issue.

Maksym Prokhorov Founder and IT manager of PM Partners

The basis for building a digital core is the company’s system.

The quality of a company’s digital core primarily depends on the internal system and its focus. This shows how the organization works and where optimization is needed.

Highlighting the main components, in order to understand in which areas restructuring of business processes is needed. For example, it can be:

- groups of clients and channels of their attraction;

- the most important goods / services;

- strategic capabilities and plans of the enterprise;

- available internal issues;

- features of interaction of departments and / or employees.

The list goes on and on, but before you start implementing any technology, it’s clear that using them alone can’t make a business digital. Therefore, first of all, you need to build the right business models and understand how to implement them. Without this, IT systems will not help to achieve the desired result.

It’s better to be someone who reorganizes than something which is reorganized

Norman Augustine, a well-known American businessman.

Tasks of digital technologies in business

I want to emphasize the basic functions of IT technologies that every company needs:

- Ensuring continuous operation.

- Increasing asset, sales and the number of customers development, improving the quality of service, improving the efficiency of business processes, creating new products and services.

- The basis for innovation and qualitatively new changes that meet modern trends in the market in which you work.

I will note that due to the introduction of the right technologies, some processes are changing radically.

Today, you see the foundation for digital transformation every day. These are smartphones in the hands of your employees, where they have convenient applications. Accordingly, such simplicity and mobility in the company’s daily business processes will be clear and close to them.

However, digital transformation which is used simply to maintain the trend is ineffective . You, as a leader, need to understand and calculate what the business will gain from the changes. For example, you can use a Telegram bot and a mobile electronic signature to organize document management, providing a reliable information security system. Such innovation will reduce the time of concluding contracts from one to two days. And in this case, you will not just implement electronic document management as an automation option, but will change the business processes themselves. This is what you need to focus on when talking about the digital core of the company.

Find out what your customers need. You don’t have to guess, just find out

Yitzhak Adizes, an Israeli and American writer and business consultant specializing in improving management, said.

Reasons why it is crucial to go “digital”

I will focus on those that are important from the perspective of top management of the company:

1) Users gain more and more digital experience, which changes their requirements for companies and forms new consumer habits.

2) Your partners and competitors are already introducing new technologies, tools and platforms, changing their processes.

3) Consolidation in some markets and intensification of competition. “Change or leave” is becoming a trend here.

4) New technologies make it possible to improve supply and reduce the cost of individual processes.

5) The desire to get the most promising and qualified employees and the desire to be in their eyes a progressive employer.

Employees who feel that management cares for them not only as subordinates but also as individuals are more productive, satisfied and better self-fulfilling. A satisfied employee is a satisfied customer and a big profit

Anne Malkahi, former CEO of Xerox