Digitalisation is about transforming your entire organisation and what you offer. It sounds vague and vast. And it’s high time we took this challenge seriously.
Portabla Media has been working on creating and developing websites and other digital services since the late 1990s. You could call us a web agency or a digital agency, but the question is whether it’s actually ‘websites’ we’re helping you and others with. A technical platform is all well and good, but if it doesn’t contribute to the flourishing and continued development of your business, it isn’t worth much.
For some time now, we’ve preferred to talk about working on the digitalisation of brands, businesses and operations. It sounds grand and vague, of course, in true consultancy style, but it’s still a better way to describe value-creating work than simply saying we build websites for the private sector, the public sector and charitable organisations.
Right, so what does that actually mean?
Brand digitalisation
A brand is, of course, far more than just a logo. The brand is the feeling that your customer – or other stakeholders – associate with your business. When you digitalise your offering, the brand will also take on a digital dimension. This doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with your old brand at all.
If you take a step back and examine your brand ‘from a distance’ – what does it stand for, what associations does it evoke? And what does the brand’s image look like when it moves onto a mobile device?
Digitising business
What does your business concept look like? What is it that enables you to make money (or makes people feel good, attracts members in droves, or otherwise fulfils the core – the purpose – of your business)?
Digitising a business concept involves far more than simply offering e-commerce – digitising business is about the core of your business being digital.
Digitalisation of business operations
Let’s say you’re an insurance adviser. In that case, digitalising your particular business might mean that you highlight the unique aspects of your offering in a digital format to a greater extent. You might develop a chat-based advisory service, where artificial intelligence acts as a tool to match your expertise and what you offer with the motivations and needs of your users.
Digitising a business is also about moving parts of analogue operations online, and doing so to a high standard (everyone knows all too well how badly it works when it’s done without quality).
Digitalisation for you – a thought experiment
Over the past twenty years, many industries have seen new entrants doing the same thing that others have been doing for a long time, but smarter, in different ways, streamlined – and entirely digitally. Think of the music industry, savings services outside the banking sector, and all the services that allow you to rent accommodation and cars from private individuals. This is often down to established companies and organisations failing to keep up, whilst new players meet people’s needs in new, perhaps smarter, ways.
What would your offering look like, if you could build it from scratch – and make it digital? Think of your brand, your business concept and your day-to-day operations as a premium digital service.
If possible, think like Spotify; some content is free for the user, but what you offer is so valuable that people want to subscribe to it.
It’s by no means an easy task – especially as you need to work on the whole trio of brand, business and operations. It becomes rather ineffective if any part is left out.
Get in touch with your thoughts
If you think this sounds sensible and interesting, you’re very welcome to contact us – even if you’re not primarily looking to buy anything. Portabla Media can’t do everything, but we’d go so far as to say that we can help you at least get started with your digitalisation.
What’s more, we’re genuinely interested in hearing your thoughts on this.
