Digital acceleration is fueling growth across the global economy, which is fundamentally reshaping customer behavior, individual companies, and even entire industries.
To keep up in this shifting environment, organizations must plan carefully and act quickly – and those that do not risk getting left behind. In this guide, we’ll cover digital acceleration inside and out, exploring its basic meaning, why it matters, and how to prepare for the digital future.
Digital Acceleration
Digital technology has exerted an enormous influence on the way we live, interact, and conduct business. Technologies such as the internet and mobile devices, for instance, have revolutionized every area of our lives.
The digital revolution has yet to end, however, and we can expect to see many more technological developments in the years to come. In fact, technological advancements have been proceeding rapidly over the past several years, and some argue that they are even speeding up.
Definitions and Key Ideas
Digital acceleration is a term often used synonymously with terms such as digital transformation and digital change.
Here are a few important ideas that can offer insight into these digital trends:
Digital transformation refers to the use of digital technology to transform an organization, its business model, its strategy, its customer experience, and other areas of the business.
Many companies have realized that digital transformation is an imperative in the modern era, since those that cannot successfully adopt technology cannot keep up in the current economy.
Digital adoption is the implementation, integration, and full utilization of technology. In an enterprise setting, for instance, digital adoption not only embraces software implementation, but activities required to maximize the ROI of that software, such as user onboarding and training.
Digital acceleration often carries the same meaning as digital transformation. The inclusion of the term “acceleration,” however, places a greater emphasis on the idea of speed – and speed is certainly an essential characteristic that defines the current digital revolution.
In short, digital acceleration cannot be understood without understanding how and why digital technology is driving change in the modern economy.
How Digital Acceleration Impacts the Business World
Digital acceleration is having an extensive impact on the modern business world, so it pays to understand its effects in-depth. These are a few of the most important areas to pay attention to:
Profit. Digital acceleration offers significant advantages, such as improved organizational resilience, performance, effectiveness, and efficiency.
Companies that can exploit digital technology to its fullest extent, therefore, will often generate significantly higher profit margins than digital laggards.
Customer continuity. New technology generates new ways of interacting with customers, as well as new forms of customer value.
Mobile technology, for example, gave rise to mobile apps, mobile marketing, and many other mobile trends. Those, in turn, opened up completely new standards and methods of customer acquisition and retention.
The digital workplace. The workplace itself has evolved radically over the past several decades. Typewriters and fax machines gave way to desktop computers, which were then augmented by laptops, mobile devices, and more. Today, for instance, technology allows employees or even entire offices to work remotely.
These are just a few of the many ways that digital acceleration has changed the modern business world. In the future, we can expect to see even more changes at an even more accelerated pace, so it is important to plan ahead and act early.
To better understand what lies in store, it is important to examine the underlying trends that are shaping today’s digital business world.
Trends Driving Digital Acceleration in Today’s Economy
A few of the biggest trends driving digital acceleration include:
Digital Innovation and Disruption
Technological advancements open up the door to new products and services.
Innovative companies that push these innovative products to market can then capture market share, gain a competitive advantage, and disrupt other businesses, if not entire industries.
Those innovations, in turn, force companies to either respond in kind or get left behind. A few examples of disruptive technology include:
The internet. The internet, as everyone knows, has completely reshaped the way people interact and conduct business. It has also fueled the growth of today’s largest companies, such as Google and Amazon.
Cloud computing. Cloud computing provides organizations with remote, scalable computing power. Among other things, cloud computing enables remote working, a capability which became essential during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mobile technology. Mobile phones took the internet and transferred it onto handheld devices, and, more recently, onto wearable devices. This new channel further reshaped the way people interact with one another and with businesses.
The introduction of each of these technologies has significantly altered the way businesses operate, and in the years ahead, we can expect to see similar disruptions from emerging technologies.
Digital Acceleration Is the Future
Since the digital revolution is ongoing, digital acceleration will continue to reshape the economy for the foreseeable future. In the years ahead, business leaders can expect to see major influences from trends such as:
Artificial intelligence (AI). Artificial intelligence is still in its early stages, but it has already demonstrated significant potential.
Google, for instance, used deep learning to reduce data center cooling bills by around 40%. In the coming years, this technology promises to revolutionize many areas in business, from the workplace to the customer experience.
The Internet of Things (IoT). The Internet of Things refers to the connection of sensors and everyday devices to the internet.
These devices can include everything from wearable devices to home appliances to sensors in the supply chain. Real-time data from those sensors can then provide insight, automate certain functions, and more.
Remote working. During the COVID-19 pandemic, remote working became common around the world. To ensure employees’ safety, organizations implemented telecommuting policies almost overnight, accelerating the adoption of remote working technology and processes.
In the years ahead, we can expect to see more remote working arrangements, which will in turn fuel the acceleration of digital workflows, remote working software, and other business processes that depend on telecommuting.
Digital adoption. The process of digital adoption is central to digital acceleration and transformation. In order to become more digitally mature, after all, companies must implement and fully adopt new digital tools and IT systems.
Forecasting and planning for the digital future may not be easy, but it will be essential for survival in post-COVID next normal, an era which will be more digital, more fast-paced, and more volatile.
Benchmarking
Breaking it down to the nuts and bolts, the first stage of digital transformation is the process of setting a benchmark for an organization.
This can be done through a capability audit, skills assessment or a strategy review. Getting some idea of where a business lies on the scale of what’s possible in the market (or indeed in more innovative markets), allows understanding of change requirements for people, processes and technology.
Of course, there are many companies that help organizations with such work, including Econsultancy, but first the organization must decide whether this work is something they can do in-house, or if an outside perspective is needed.
Customer focus
The most common theme of digital transformation is that it should be customer-led (driven by your audience needs).
This is largely through a focus on consistent, personal and enjoyable customer experiences (in multiple channels), enabled by consolidated customer insight, all backed up by a flexible technology stack.
As customer experience touches upon many parts of the business (comms, fulfillment, payment, customer service, marketing, design, I.T. etc.), it’s clear why digital transformation require collaboration across the organization.
Data
Much of digital transformation is modelled on the startup culture of Silicon Valley. Tech companies that have grown to enormous valuations are often noted for their transparent culture.
What this means from an engineering point of view is unfettered access to data and code (as long as you leave it in the state you found it), and, of course, people with the skill to manipulate these.
It’s a fairly obvious point in 2015, but connecting customer data sources and empowering staff to dive in for insight is an important part of product development and digital optimization.
Education
This is the theory that every part of your business, even those that notionally do not have a digital output, should understand the digital side of your business. That might be understanding your own digital products, the theory behind your customer acquisition strategy, or best practice customer service.
Digital training for ‘non-digital roles’ was cited as a high or medium priority for only 27% of marketers we surveyed in 2011. By 2013 this had increased to 40%.
Failing fast
Fail fast. Test and learn. Iterate. More terms from the world of engineering and product development, and ones that firmly apply to I.T. in a transforming organization.
Part of the attraction of the innovation lab is the ability to create a new tech stack, one that is quicker than the legacy structure managed by I.T. and allows teams to work quickly in sprints.
Government Digital Service
The poster child of digital transformation.
GDS and its standard of ‘digital by default’ has continued to transform the UK Government’s websites and move from a publishing to a transactional model.
Digital experiences are shaped by digital and design principles, and backed by a clear digital strategy.
Moving various Government websites to the GOV.UK domain involved creating or updating 120,000 pieces of content and training more than 1,000 people in user needs, writing for the web and how to use our publisher tool. All of this was documented through GDS’ blog.
Hurdles
Common barriers to better digital experiences include regulation (in industries such as Financial Services), legacy technology (which takes time, money and expertise to replace) and a skills shortage (in specialisms such as engineering and data science).
These barriers can only be removed with investment and cultural change, two big factors in any digital transformation initiative.
Innovation labs
Innovation labs are springing up faster than ever, from Manchester United to Ryanair. The aim is to incubate digital excellence, giving the company space to come to terms with a cultural shift, and the lab the freedom to create (and fail).
This separation allows a lab to target a desirable location and create a working environment likely to attract talent.
Job descriptions
Digital job descriptions are changing as a result of digital’s journey to every branch of the organization.
New roles are emerging, such as Head of Programmatic. Skills diversification is taking place, meaning specialists must have key functional skills and work with other teams.
Organizational structures and reporting lines are changing, so a Head of Analytics may be manager to CRO specialist that sit in different departments.
Finally, more roles are moving inhouse. All this means your job descriptions need to attract the right people, not be a list of tasks or a pipe dream.
KPIs
The fear of losing control can cause tension in organizations as they restructure and restaff. Ensuring employees always have KPI-level goals to work towards (which influence the rewards they see), will help to arrest this fear.
Recognizing individual effort and ability sits alongside a shared P&L (and, of course, a shared customer) that ensures different teams are marching to the same beat.
Long-term value
Long-term value creation is the goal of digital transformation. Prioritizing long term value over short term revenue creation is difficult for many businesses focused on month-end targets.
However, businesses investing in product or service development have shown how new revenue streams can be created or a competitive advantage achieved.
Management (without puppies and rainbows)
Management during cultural change sometimes requires tough decisions. Fires are as important as hires, according to Jack and Suzy Welch, writing in Fortune.
“Soft culture matters as much as hard numbers. And if your company’s culture is to mean anything, you have to hang — publicly — those in your midst who would destroy it.
“It’s a grim image, we know. But the fact is, creating a healthy, high-integrity organizational culture is not puppies and rainbows.”
User testing
User testing is a well-established part of digital service design, but it’s even more important for companies undertaking a user-centric digital transformation.
Though market research can’t always tell you what a customer wants, user testing can quickly scupper a new product, or (hopefully) allow the iteration of a prototype.
Vocabulary
Language is an important agent for cultural change. In the words of Sean Cornwell from Travelex, you should ‘talk about speed, agile, failure, new capabilities, ways of working and collaboration like it’s going out of fashion’.
Workspace design
The grand cliche of agencyland – table football will make everyone more innovative.
In reality, there is a science to open-plan offices, with Harvard Business Review (and Marissa Mayer) pointing to random interactions with colleagues as advantageous to the bottom line.
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