Digital Strategy: Its Meaning & Impact on Business Growth

For any company to succeed in today’s world, digital strategy is the key. Here, we’ll go through why it’s essential for any business, with companies building software in focus, and what are its key aspects. Understanding the digital strategy meaning is crucial for your business to grow, and it’s proven that you’re more likely to have bigger success with your software product compared to your competitors who don’t have it all figured out yet. Unfortunately for them.

Because the goal of digital strategy is to optimise processes so that the end user has a reliable and useful product — if your digital strategy isn’t worked out yet, this article is for you.

Why Digital Strategy Matters

Users across the globe expect a seamless experience when using any product — be it a mobile app, web app, website, and so on. Of course, the competitors are not standing still, so they are constantly raising the bar that everyone who wants successful software delivery must follow. If the digital plan is not developed, it’s easy to fall behind competitors. It is interesting to note that 87% of senior decision-makers consider digital strategy a top priority. Also, almost 90% of businesses already have a fully set up digital strategy or it is in an advanced stage of development. Hips don’t lie, and neither do numbers. It’s time for every company to have its own digital strategy.

Benefits of a structured digital strategy

Keeping up with the competition. New technologies are on the rise all the time (we’re not even going to mention AI), and they are the key to maintaining an edge in your industry and responding promptly to market changes.

Improving user experience. This is a big one. Here, the key is to provide your users with a user experience using all digital channels — web, mobile, social media — so that you can meet their needs.

Improving efficiency. Today, many processes can be automated and there are various software, i.e. solutions that can cut costs in the short and long term and ultimately lead to a clearer and easier upgrade of your product.

A myriad of opportunities. New sources of income? Potential changes in your business models? Analysing your competitors and learning from their mistakes? This is what the meaning of a digital strategy that’s well-structured truly is.

Basically, the meaning of digital strategy is you being ensured that all aspects of your business work together towards the end goal — your software’s success, business growth, and so forth.

Key Aspects of Digital Strategy

Each software-building company has a different approach to its digital strategy, but here are the 4 most common aspects needed for a successful end product.

Agile development. Agile development methodology is a broad term with the goal that software solutions always have in mind the users’ requirements as well as the adaptability of your product in ever-shifting business circumstances. This approach involves the use of flexible and iterative methods in software development. The result? Your software can be built based on feedback and can deliver new functionalities faster.

Cloud computing. In other words, using cloud platforms to store your software in the making — cloud computing is the pillar of scalability and adaptability of your software product. Benefits of cloud computing involve scaling your product more easily, offering remote support as well greatly increased cost efficiency as there’s no need for expensive hardware and infrastructure.

Data-driven decisions. As a crucial part of a good digital strategy lies collecting and analysing data that will help guide you to ‘tweak’ your business direction, decisions, and will simply make it easier to bring decisions based on not guessing but real data.

Digital transformation. It involves increased productivity as it automates repetitive tasks and improves workflows. It also leads to a better and personalised relationship with the end user with the help of analytics. And finally, it provides a greater competitive advantage because it uses new technologies (e.g. the ubiquitous AI) for easier innovation.

Digital Transformation vs Digital Strategy

These two terms are often used interchangeably, but there’s a difference between these two.

So if digital transformation involves an all-around process of changing your company’s way of doing business, and finds ways to adjust it to the ever-evolving changes in digital trends, the meaning of digital strategy is different as it brings a different approach. Its focus is defining the specific goals your business needs or requires and aims to implement them and turn them into reality.

Since our focus is on companies that develop software products or services, we can see a clear difference between digital transformation and digital strategy. Digital transformation involves the use of new tools and processes, while digital strategy focuses on how to make such a transition as easy and painless as possible for your company by setting steps and prioritising them.

From MVP to Scaling Your Product

When building a specific software product or service, one of the most common terms you hear is the term minimum viable product (MVP). This is a product that can be built in the shortest possible time for the client, and contains the key features that form the essence or the backbone of the product itself.

An MVP is an example of a smart and well-thought-out digital strategy. Because, with this approach, it’s easier and faster to create a product that doesn’t include a large number of often unnecessary features. On the contrary, it’s focused on what the user really needs from your product. Of course, the benefit of this approach is a great cost reduction. After the MVP phase, the product can be upgraded and this is where software scalability comes into play.

After the MVP proves to be successful and gives a signal that it has the potential to be further invested in, the company can (and must) have a ready scalability plan with the help of a built digital strategy. In other words, for the software to have good prospects for successful scaling in the future, a comprehensive and data-driven digital strategy is a must.

Conclusion

If you are looking for your software to have the ability of keeping up with your competition, more options to improve its user experience and efficiency as well as the possibility to be more prone to dynamic changes in today’s age, digital strategy is key. It provides adaptability, scalability and data-driven decision-making, which ultimately leads to a greater chance of your product to excel and your business to grow.

We’re here for you as a reliable and experienced partner who can help develop a digital strategy for your software. Contact us if you have a business idea that we can turn into reality.