What is your digital business ambition for the near term?
Is it to build efficiency into your existing customer operations? Or is it to transform how you do business? Is it to do nothing at all?
There isn’t a right or wrong answer to these questions.
The questions are intended to make you uncover your priorities.
The truth is your long term strategy you probably need to focus on both efficiency and transformation. The truth is you likely need to do both.
It can feel like a tug of war.
In some way’s it’s the modern equivalent of should you focus on lowering costs or increasing revenue. With a lot of overlap between them. They don’t work in isolation. Which is why we need both.
Efficiencies lower costs and enable us to do business more profitably – albeit at an implementation cost. Revenue provides us with funds to invest back into the business to grow more business – albeit if the revenue is profitable.
Sometimes the tug of war is because of near term demands. Especially in challenging times.
Between surviving the pandemic and facing a likely recession – it can feel like just keeping the lights on is a good near term ambition. Let along consider a digital business ambition.
The temptation can be to do nothing at all.
The near term focus is pulled into how we are doing right now. How can we protect the business right now. Rather than looking too far ahead. Rather than focusing on business growth.
The risk is you don’t invest in anything in the near term. It’s a temptation to not do any changes when times are bad.
The word investment sounds like the benefits won’t be reaped for some time. Yet that’s not really the case.
Rarely is the payoff of an investment only at the end. Even though the full extent of the investment may accumulate over time, we often reap benefits right from the start.
Doing nothing can mean you forgo a near-term benefit that could help you weather the current storm.
So yes, by all means pause and take stock before acting.
But don’t do nothing.
Strategize for the long term with the information you have now. Act in the near term. Select initiatives that balance protecting against current business challenges while while preserving the future strategy.
