This blog heading is nothing we haven’t all seen by now. Many of these writings contain opinions and data around how to improve a brands digital maturity and further their reach in the market. However, at Echidna we feel that a lot of these post and articles are lacking one important topic essential to the growth and future-proofing (if such a thing exists) to a digital business. Whether you are focused on the B2B or B2C market, if you are not continually innovating you will be left behind. Left behind can mean many things; perhaps your sales growth slumps, maybe your site performance is lacking, for some it means your workflow process and business operations are antiquated, or perhaps you can’t keep up the changing demands of your ideal buyer because you don’t understand their behaviors.
Continual innovation is essential to every digital business.
So how can you turn your strategy into proper execution, over and over again? It takes a series of steps, starting with setting the wheels in the right direction.
- Strategy: First, set the wheels in the right direction. Strategy doesn’t mean one, three, or five days of pounding out your brands future for the next 1-3-5 years in a boardroom. It is a continual and collaborative process that aligns leadership vision with tactical execution. Some simple tips for getting started on continual strategy planning include:
- Assess your current state
- Update or define your vision/mission
- Issue strategic directives
- Convey strategic calendars
- Repeat
Now the wheels are continually turning, but how do they know where to go?
- Roadmap: Roadmaps depict direction, pace, and milestones as you execute your strategy and achieve business objectives. When creating a roadmap be sure to have clearly defined projects and products, as well as specify milestones and KPIs. Also, discuss with teams and set a defined solution scope and specify what the scope of work for the next solution release will be.
So now you are moving in the right direction, but how to you make sure you get to your milestone and keep going onto the next?
- Execution: Driving your progress from one milestone to the next as you innovate and pivot and adapt to changing business demands will keep you abreast of your customer demands and competition. It takes proper planning (strategy and road-mapping), but once those have been put in place in a continual motion, you will be able to execute on building and refining your solutions, introducing change, and perform new operations.
In today’s digital economy one thing you can always count on is change. By continually introducing new, and refining current solutions, you will set a solid path for the future of your brand. Learn more about improving your brands digital journey and future-readiness with our Digital Journey Maturity Executive Report.
