James earned a master’s in chemical engineering from Imperial College London. He began his career on oil rigs, but soon shifted to marketing and digital platforms. First, he learned to use digital channels for corporate product promotion. Then, he immersed himself in implementing software solutions in SMEs.
Defining Digital Business
Many businesses have an online presence. This ranges from a social media account for a bakery to an accounting database for a legal firm. Do these features alone make a business digital? According to James, the answer is complex. He believes digital infrastructure in a business comes in several categories. Some improvements focus on marketing and sales. Others digitise HR, products, and branding. Thus, we should not ask “Is it digital?”, but rather “How digital is it?”.
Many companies start by trying to improve their website. Beyond this, digital transformation can take many other directions. Businesses can leverage technology to analyse production or supply chains. Apps can integrate with physical products to track performance. It becomes easier to improve digital maturity once we identify specific operational inefficiencies. By fixing these issues, we can increase company value.
James advocates for purpose-driven digital transformation. To illustrate a mismatch between needs and wants, he provided a real-life example. A customer requested an app for their business. However, the request did not have a clear business value proposition. Instead, the company owner wanted to showcase the app to his peers. Because the goal was vanity, James delivered a simple application.
Digital Impact
Beyond operational efficiencies, data allows companies to personalise offerings. Until recently, businesses would rely on their staff to remember unique preferences. However, with an increasing amount of information, we can create scalable systems. Today, an internal system can inform any branch about a specific customer. Such data can include summaries of calls, purchases, returns, and complaints. James suggests such an approach can save time spent answering the same questions. But he also cautions that we must not be intrusive.
As technology improves, people can become the primary bottleneck in business processes. Teams might use disconnected software. Employees could underuse data if it stays only within one department. Staff may update their own systems without sharing that information across teams. Companies can also lose the natural human feedback loop. Staff may release data during social hacking campaigns. Employees may also choose to share sensitive data with tech companies via chatbots. To mitigate these risks, organisations must provide comprehensive training on digital practices.
Software Trends
Over the past few decades, software offerings have unbundled. Customers used to buy a package of programs from a large company for an upfront amount. Many monolithic platforms have since created subscriptions. Some are now competing with niche specialist software. This composable approach allows companies to replace systems they outgrow. Thus, James argues few businesses should write their own code.
Learn more about James at linkedin.com/in/jamesderry/