Your Digital Roadmap is Out of Date

There isn’t anything new about business transformation, as changes in technology have always moved digital roadmaps forward. At their Convergence US conference, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said, “Every business will become a software business, build applications, use advanced analytics, and provide SaaS services…”.

Whether you want to admit it or not, your digital roadmap is out of date and your business may not be ready to fully embrace changes on the horizon. New players on the scene will more than likely disrupt the space, in the ways that Uber disrupted the taxi market and how Airbnb completely shook up the hospitality industry. The same can be said for how websites like Expedia and and Kayak have decreased the need for human travel agents. It’s time to take another look at your strategy and see ways in which it can be improved. Especially if what you’re doing isn’t enough to keep up with your competitors.

Your Platform Needs an Update

There are many signs that your platform is in need of an update. Perhaps it is running too slow for your team to be productive or it is lacking the features that you have developed a need for. This could greatly impact your business as it makes strides to keep up with changes involving modern development trends in technology. It’s important to keep in mind that 88% of the Fortune 500 firms that existed in 1955 are gone. If your business ignores its need for an updated platform you could fall down the same path as Blockbuster and Toys R Us who let their digital roadmap get completed bypassed by due to innovation incompetence.

This ranges to anything from big data, artificial intelligence, and acquiring insights from real-time data. If your platform isn’t able to keep up with the changing requirements of your business, you need to decide if the next steps will be to make updates or build an entirely new platform from the ground-up. Whichever makes the most sense for your business, ensuring your platform can withstand and handle everything you need it to do is an absolute must in building your digital roadmap.

Your Tech Stack is Full of Security Holes

Your tech stack is the foundation on which your web or mobile application is built on, and this technology has a big effect on how your business is run and how it will operate in the future. If there are security holes within this foundation, it’s only a matter of time before things start to crumble.

In order to protect your tech stack, ask yourself when the last time you had a security audit was and how easy it could be for someone to hack your system. It’s unwise to think that your tech stack is immune from security breaches and hackers, especially when keeping them at bay seems to be harder with each passing year. Even major companies, like Jeep, aren’t immune to falling victim to hackers. If your tech stack has holes, it not only opens them up to hackers but when your company eventually takes a hit from this attack, this gives your competition the chance to learn from your mistakes and leave you in their dust.

Your Customers Expect a Premium Digital Experience

Your customers are constantly connected to the world of digital information, even when on the go, thanks to smartphones and tablets. Approximately 95% of Americans own a cell phone with 77% of those being smartphones. Additionally, one in five American adults is a “smartphone-only” internet user, meaning it’s their primary source of internet access. Because of this, your digital roadmap has to include what your company’s digital experience brings to the table.

How mobile-friendly is your website? Could it use a redesign? How many emails are you sending to subscribers a day? How quickly does your company’s Twitter account answer questions from customers? These are all questions that are going to impact your digital roadmap. How your business interacts with customers through a technology lens plays a major part in your strategy. Take a look at what your competitors are doing. Are there areas where they excel that you could improve on?

Having a good user interface (UI) and a good user experience (UX) is table stakes for a modern customer experience. Your users expect to have a clean, thoughtfully designed, and easy to use application. If you don’t provide it, a competitor certainly will.

You Aren’t Analyzing Business Data

It’s one thing to have the tools to collect data, and it’s another to know how to read and analyze it. If you aren’t making and drawing any legitimate conclusions from the data you collect, what use it is? Before you make moves to compile business data, construct a plan regarding the exact information you need and how you’ll apply this data once it is collected.

This data can be used to power the services and products that already exist, while also being the starting point for imagining and testing new products. Not only should you be taking the steps to make conclusions from current data, but it’s also important to look for ways to combine previous sets of data and see how they potentially relate to each other. As your business grows, develops, and becomes more complex, being able to learn from various sources of data is vital to your digital roadmap.

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Let Egen Fix Your Digital Roadmap

If you find that your digital roadmap is out of date, it’s important that your business makes a change as soon as possible, as things can quickly get much, much worse. Companies that fail to embrace digital transformation have 20% lower profits than their average industry competitors.

At Egen, we can help fix your roadmap so you don’t follow suit of companies who have failed to move forward using digital transformation. Thanks to our data and cloud experience, we’ll be able to keep your current data pipelines and database while modernizing them with an entirely new user experience. Contact us today to learn more.