The Opportunity Costs of Standing Still

It’s easy to justify maintaining the status quo in order to protect current business—but if you refuse to modernize your business infrastructure, you will eventually fall too far behind to ever catch back up.

If you have a successful business, your organizational systems may seem to be keeping up with demand and your customers may seem happy with the services you’re providing them. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course—in fact, that’s a great place to be. Your previous investments in business systems have paid off and you’re where you want to be.

The trouble is that it won’t last.

While present business may seem to be going well, organizations that take that as a reason to stand pat are sure to lose ground to hungrier competitors. Even if you think you have your target market wrapped up, modern technology continues to open new markets and reshape existing ones, making established enterprises vulnerable to decline and even death.

A transformational shift is underway that is opening the door for the kind of disruption that will displace even incumbent leaders across a number of industries. Organizations that look only at the present and fail to plan ahead risk losing out to competitors acting more strategically.

Short Term Fixes vs Strategic Transformation

As the digital transformation unfolds around us, customers across all industries are demanding more from their technology. Even without your realizing it, your customers may be running into the limits of your business applications and wishing for more. Though it can be tempting to simply fix things when they break and limp along, that is not a viable strategy for the long term.

By adopting a strategic approach, you can solve the immediate needs of today as well as set yourself up for success in the future. While business leaders are aware that “going digital” is a good thing, it’s not enough to develop a mobile app and call it a day. It’s essential to create a holistic plan that best augments the strengths of your business and gives your customers the experience they’re actually looking for.

Consider a major ecommerce company that uses a flexible rules engine to evaluate transactions within milliseconds to provide an exceptional customer experience, or a major airline that delivers thousands of personalized promotions in multiple languages. These businesses would have lost ground to their competitors if they had failed to embrace digital opportunities, but instead they remain leaders in their industries.

Defining Digital Business

To understand the changes you need to make to remain not just competitive, but a market leader, it’s critical to recognize the effects of the digital world on your business. At Progress, we’ve been transforming organizations for 35 years, and we know what digital business means. Not only that, but we know how to get your business where it needs to be.

Our solutions provide the flexibility of adding a variety of digital components or opting for an all-in-one transformation. We are developers at our core, and are proud of our extensive track record of innovation and enterprise-level support. As you prepare for the challenges—and opportunities—of digital transformation, we hope you’ll join with us in transforming the way the world does business.