Sarv Sarvanan, senior VP and GM Dell EMC India COE in this article reveals digital transformation lessons for start-ups.
Do you remember a time when getting from Point A to Point B within a city involved either driving yourself, or waiting on the road for some form public transport – a bus, an auto, or a taxi. Flash forward to today, city travel, for most of us, involves tapping into a phone based app to summon a taxi to our doorstep and then paying for the ride through an e-wallet or mobile payments.
I can’t think of a better way to illustrate the way emerging technologies have impacted and shaped our lives. And to be perfectly honest, it is the start-up ecosystem that has made the best use of the ongoing digital transformation. Never before has the business market and eco system been so conducive to setting up a new venture. Technology has opened up new and immensely exciting avenues for those of enterprising nature and innovative minds.
Since 2010, start-ups have been turning the market upside down with their new interpretations of how business can be done. Needless to say, end customers have been lapping up the out of box solutioning and services offered by start-ups who are considered serious threats for larger enterprises.
In fact, according to Dell’s Digital Transformation Index, 78 percent of corporate leaders admitted that they felt threatened by digital start-ups and 62 percent have seen new competition enter the market as a result of the emergence of digital technologies According to NASSCOM, the Indian start up space ranks 3rd in the world with over 4200 start ups at the end of 2015. The emergence of this set of energetic innovative minds empowered with digital technology has made corporates rethink their priorities.
Yes, the world of start-ups is an exciting place to be in, and one hears a lot about amazing start-up success stories. But the truth is, only a small percentage of start-ups actually make it big. According to reports, more than 200 startups have shut shop in2016 and a number of others have slashed operations and laid off staff to stay afloat. Why does a once promising start-up suddenly find it impossible to keep going?
The reasons could be many ranging from increased competition, lack of real revenue focus, to inadequate planning and excessive spending. The most telling reason, in my opinion is the fact that the pace of technology development and innovation sometimes outpaces the most innovative of start-ups. So much so, that by the time the business is up and running, the technology has evolved and newer more exciting entities have started operating in the same space. The key here is cycle time.
Digital transformation implies the ability to quickly adapt to emerging technology trends and use them as a base for ground breaking business propositions. While start-ups have leveraged and continue to leverage this phenomenon, it is important to learn from some of the trends within the move to digital.
Be original- there is a tendency to follow in the footsteps of a previously successful start-up. The problem with this model is that sometimes, the first movers have the advantage of scale, customer recall and loyalty. Indian start-ups should focus on innovating for local markets. For example, Flipkart, though based on Amazon, understood local sentiment and launched the COD option. Amazon later introduced it after witnessing its tremendous success. Make sure your offering is original to the market you are operating in, and adapt to market conditions quickly. Spend some time on understanding the gaps in the market and identifying ways in which to solve them. The time is now to innovate in India for India and the world.
Agile Innovation – digital disruption is not a threat to just large corporates. Start-ups that fail to keep pace with newer, more effective technologies emerging everyday stand the chance of losing their business to more cutting edge entities. You might have an amazing app for in-store CRM, but if you don’t augment its capabilities for an omnichannel environment, or fail to take advantage of geospatial hyperlocal marketing technologies, you stand the risk of becoming obsolete in the current market space. The mantra for the start up space today is agile innovation. Think out of the box, adapt quickly, always provide on time / real time services and stay ahead of the curve.
Delve deeper into data: data is the undisputed king of the digital age. Pay attention to your data to understand the market, customer demands, and even your product performance. Use data intelligently to tweak and improve your offerings to the market in order to stay relevant in a rapidly changing scenario. Your organization’s data can help you predict opportunities for growth and development at every stage.
Don’t lose touch with the customer – as a business grows, the customer becomes something of an afterthought. In a digital first market, this could be the company’s death knell. Remember, the customer is right at the center of the business world’s move to transform digitally. The customer’s demand for on-demand service and availability, is the driving force for companies to go digital first. Start-ups like PayTM and FreshDesk are successful because they understood their customer’s pain points and the gaps in the market and went on to address them through technology solutions. They remain relevant because they have their ears to the ground and know what the rapidly changing customer wants and strive to provide just that. Stay in touch with your customers to understand them better and offer them the personalized experiences they expect.
Invest in people – human intuition, human emotion and the very human ability to imagine can never be replaced by machines, no matter how sentient and how artificially intelligent. The current drive to transform digitally is being driven by a very human workforce and this is one trend you can count on continuing in the years to come. Invest in your talent pool. Inculcate a work atmosphere that is based on the twin principles of transparency and trust and before long these will reflect in your customer relationships as well. Nurture a team that is not only technically skilled, but flexible and imaginative and motivated to think big and out of the box.
The emergence of a strong and vibrant star-up ecosystem has jolted the corporate world out of its complacency. The stakes are higher than ever and only the most innovative and the most adaptable will survive in the modern market. Even within start-ups, there is no room for complacency, Digital disruptions have brought about a world that is changing rapidly and start-ups have to keep their finger on the pulse of the market in order to surge ahead of competition.
