Digital technology has transformed the way we live and continue to do so year after year.

Companies must start to modernise now or will become extinct soon.

In this blog, we explain three reasons why we believe established organisations and start-ups need to modernise now.

At the end of this blog, we will let you know where you can get help to modernise your business.

Humankind has experienced massive disruptions to the way we live.

Despite the disruption, many companies are trying to grow their business, but only a few break out of the pack.

Here at Modern Business, we want your company to be those companies breaking out of the pack!

The fact is that all businesses have an existing value proposition, and they want to sustain them. They cannot sacrifice their current revenue streams.

Yet to make more profit or sustain the existing revenues, they have to make changes to their existing value proposition and delivery mechanisms. They don’t lose their current revenue streams but replace them with a more profitable value stream. And this is why they need to modernise.

Modernising is not easy. It is complicated as there are so many moving parts due to advances in technology and the changing nature of people’s lifestyle due to the adoption of new technologies. Such changes have further accelerated in recent times due to accustomed social isolation protocols.

Although social isolation was a temporary measure, people have also seen the advantages technology can provide. These new practices are most likely to prevail even after we become immune to the COVID-19 virus.
So, moving forward!
Companies must prepare to take advantage of all new opportunities that are opening up rapidly.
The secret to success is to be prepared to leverage opportunities when they present themselves.

In particular, technological advances and, even more specifically, advances in digital are creating many opportunities for businesses. These opportunities can be categorised into two major areas: one digitisation and the second is the transformation of products and services.

Digitisation of existing processes and products is where we take advantage of technology to digitise existing processes and products. Example of digitisation includes healthcare systems digitising patient medical records or retail businesses digitising payment methods.

Digital transformation is where we reimagine how a business provides value to its customers and clients, deliver new value proposition with new business models, different customer experiences, create new opportunities, and pave the path to an exponential growth of the organisation itself. Such business transformation of products and services also create relevant products for customers and clients. Some familiar examples of these include Amazon, Netflix, Facebook, Uber and many more.

While technology is acting as a catalyst for the change, the lynchpin skill required is the ability to rapidly design, develop and deliver new products and services within the organisation.

Whether you are looking to digitise processes or transform your business, shorter development cycles ( meaning shorter duration of ideas to action time frame) are better and more efficient than long, expensive, and tedious cycles. Most people would agree that many factors play a role in the rapid development of new products and services. While this is not a surprise to many, achieving this requires experience, skills, talent and access to the right tools and techniques.

In either case, where you are looking to digitise or transform your business, shorter product development cycles are better and more efficient than long, expensive, and tedious cycles. In modern business, this is precisely our vision – to help companies achieve what they want fast.

The Modern Business mission is to help and coach those wanting to grow their organisation. Suppose you are also looking to grow your business to the next level. If you are ready, you can join our fast track program or access our free information here on this site to find how we help companies.

In the introduction above, this article explained a shorter duration of product development cycles or shortening the time taken to bring ideas to action are paramount in growing any business in this era. Now in this section, we will show you the key three factors that help to achieve it for established companies and startups.

Now we will explain why the shortest development cycle is vital for both established companies and startups.

Technology advances are happening at a faster rate and disrupting the way we live. Such disruptions are creating new needs, and people are looking for new ways to do things, thus making existing products redundant.

Companies offering products that are soon to be redundant cannot wait for long and engage in 18 – 24 months of research and development projects. The speed at which customer needs and technology is changing makes it impossible for project teams to wait long to launch a new version in the market.

Technology such as the internet, cloud technology, access to data, mobile devices and connectivity are changing the speed at which companies gather strategic and relevant data points.

Analysing data and extracting relevant information to create insights and new wisdom will empower entrepreneurs to develop and build solutions quickly to compete with old giants in a much leaner way.

The advances in technology create new products and services and develop unique needs and standards faster than before.
Most information we require is literally at our fingertips when and where we need it.

Pretty much all of us are accustomed to this situation. The constant flow of new product and service offers and new ways of accomplishing tasks replace the old consumption models.

In doing so, these new offers are educating consumers, creating higher expectations, fabricating unique needs, and holding companies to higher standards. To stay relevant, companies need to adapt quickly and be more agile.

Consider the scenario when COVID-19 created situations of social isolation, the technology that was already available to most were deployed differently to serve the customer’s new needs fast. Companies that could adapt quickly survived, and the others were forced to rely on government handouts or close down the business.

People are becoming more and more accustomed to new ways of living and are less tolerant of old ways of doing. Long product development cycle potentially ends up wasted efforts.

Most people are innately self-interested and lazy to consider new things unless convenient and easy to consume. So when new products and services are introduced, entrepreneurs need to think about their customers and clients and what they are usually accustomed to doing.

So, the companies that take a long time to develop their products may find themselves that their products are already obsolete by the time they are ready to launch the products.

Additionally, people appreciate what they help to create. Wise companies take advantage of this and find early strategic evangelists to be part of the development project. This help companies focus on end-user requirements and secondly keep companies abreast with shifting trends in customers’ needs.

It doesn’t matter if you raised money or are in bootstrapping start-ups; the negative cash flow you experience until you launch your new product or service will make it longer for you to reach a break-even point.

Start-ups cannot afford year-long scientific research rounds; instead, they choose to run beta trials to learn and improve.
Getting some quick ideas, putting them all together, building a raw version, and testing it is modus operandi or start-ups. There is no point in being wise without knowing if what you are creating is not relevant to your prospects.

Unlike big businesses, you have no space to keep insisting on the wrong ideas or strategy as you do not have a revenue stream to support your developmental efforts. So it would be best if you used your learning to pivot strategically to get the new product to create value.

The best way to overcome this is to identify the suitable measures before starting the development, recognise critical development efforts, and develop cycles’ outcomes. Develop, test and develop new strategies (i.e. pivot) fast -based on test results.

Organisations need to change as advances in technology shifting the way we live and interact with each other. This shift in lifestyle is forcing businesses to adopt technology fast to get better at what they do. The shit is also forcing them to reimagine the purpose of their offers and how they do what they do.
It does not matter if you are part of an established company or a start-up; you need to change the way you do and be prepared to take advantage of situations when an opportunity presents itself.

Companies must be ready to change, and they need to have a clear path and know-how to continue to leverage situations as they present themselves So here are three steps you must do now. 

1. Identify a clear path to modernising your business as customer needs changes. 
2. Develop a simple system that will help you identify the right opportunities and leverage them to your business advantage quickly. 
3. Develop skills sets or know where to find them when you need them.

Assuming you have actually read this article and got this far, we invite you to join our membership. We help our community stay breast with changes around us and help companies adopt the right strategies to grow or pivot to qualified businesses right time.