Multiple faces of Digital

Considering that a predominant professional time is spent in Digital solutions, I get this question a lot of times. What is digital? It can mean different things to different people. For my mother, digital is using WhatsApp, for my cousins and nieces and nephews, it could be Instagram, SnapChat and TikTok and Emails (I wanted to add Facebook but it is so 80s born thing).

Similarly, for different departments, organizations, industries, digital could mean something completely different.

Here is an attempt to layout different aspects of digital solutions and how they are relevant in different context. The important thing is for whom the digital solution is created and why. I think there are three personas that we can generalize, along with their specific whys.

• One is employee: Tools and applications used by employees are generally internal to the organization. This can include digitized operations (Ex. Oracle, SAP, Appian, DocuSign, etc.), providing employees with collaboration tools (Ex. Office365, Emails, Teams, Slack, etc.), establishing a communication channel in terms of having an Intranet, and provide a place to store and share documents (Ex. SharePoint). Most of the investments in these solutions can lead to productivity gains and ultimately cost reductions.
• Second is Stakeholders: Organizations have to deal with lot of external partners like vendors, government agencies, etc. and tools utilized by them can have both aspects (internal and external). Internal could be a contract management system, document sharing platform, legal systems, while external could be integration with government systems for sharing data, compliance reporting, channel management, etc.

• Third is Customer: Many organizations spend a lot of money in this area of Digital. This is where most of the common digital concepts like user experience, design thinking, user centered design, customer journey mapping, etc. are used predominantly. Any investment that is done to have solutions assisting with interacting with the customer or customer data can be considered in this space. Some of the common digital solutions in this space are website (Based on a content management system (Ex. Contentful, SiteCore, Drupal, Joomla, etc.), mobile app, an API to share content or data with other applications (internal and external), Customer relationship management (Ex. Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Hubspot, etc.), email distribution systems, marketing and advertising management, Google suite management, etc. Most of the investments in this area has a direct co-relation with revenue.

There are two more underlying areas which are closely linked with the above digital solutions. By default, professionals involved in the digital space would be aware of common things associated with these areas. I will highlight relevant digital touch points for them too.

• One is Cyber and Information security: Vulnerability testing, PCI compliance testing, etc. are common things related to cyber and digital touch points. It is of paramount importance for organizations to invest in the right cyber solutions to protect from external threats.
• The other one is Infrastructure: While laptops, phones, internal networks, form part of this stream. When it comes to servers and cloud hosting (AWS, Azure, Google cloud, etc.), there is a massive overlap with digital solutions. How the organizations assists the employees in managing digital solutions and the cost structure associated with that management depends on whether the organization goes for a cloud first strategy or a on premise hosting outlook. Many large companies follow a hybrid approach. Many employee solutions and stakeholder related internal solutions are hosted on premises while many customer related solutions are on the cloud. I am generalizing but this is the case in most scenarios.

Organizations embark on the digital transformation journeys to implement solutions in all three areas. The successful transformation is when all these solutions from three different areas are integrated and can become source of meaningful, actionable data.

So, next time when you are talking to a product manager in the digital space do not forget to ask as to which digital area they belong to. In today's world when everything is digital, it is important to understand how organizations look at this area and accordingly plan their investments.

Have you come across any other face of Digital? I am keen to get your views.