Wim GE De Vos

Small businesses with a BIG impact

Your Digital Transformation… Why, How, What?

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The world is changing. It is changing fast. Faster and more profound every day. 🤯

To adapt to change is to transform 🐛🦋 ourselves and our businesses. Transformation is a process. It takes time. It takes commitment. It is more a journey than a destination.

Digital transformation is not black or white. It is a hybrid, phased and personal process.

Over the last few years, I have been working with several visionary and experienced business owners and operators on transforming our businesses using technology.

Digital transformation is the process through which companies take a new look at their existing self and remake themselves with the help of new technologies and new ways of thinking.

We believe in Open Source Business Building and want to share our process and journey with other SME business owners or operators. That is why we have crafted this document on digital transformation for you to download.
We hope it is useful 🙏🏻 and can help you thrive in the world of today and tomorrow.

Digital Transformation
– 5 lessons
– 9 Insights
– 7 questions

Short on time? Here is the bottom line:

The digital transformation of your business will be hybrid, personal and phased.

Wim GE De Vos

You have come too far, created too much value in building your business to now be left behind…

Rethinking SaaS …to SatS.

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Imagine rethinking software around the user and not the money.

Imagine Software at the Service (SatS).

Looking back we see that the transition from Software as a Product (SaaP) to Software as a Service (SaaS) was primarily about the business model. As a result it became all about the money. This new model to monetise then drove product design. Sometimes drove it off a cliff…

The result of this software optimised for a business model resulted in:

  • super aggressive sales practices (ever had someone from Salesforce on the phone?)
  • “Salesforce Fridays” (your best sales talent actually hating every single Friday afternoon after a super successful week because they have to “populate the system”)
  • hidden lock-in strategies of all sorts making you doubt deeply before adopting any product

But the times they are a-changin´… (and pretty fast recently)

The future transformation of software is all about the User.
This will re-focus software product design fundamentally.

Think Software at the Service (SatS).

Imagine software optimised for:

  • Autonomy of every user in your company
  • Employee engagement by allowing for a high degree of personalisation
  • full transparency and pay-as-you-use

Imagine software you trust deeply. Software you can mold and shape to be what you want it to be. Personalised for you.

Imagine taking deep dives into user types and habits instead of optimising for the high-touch or low-touch sales strategies. We will come to appreciate the power of personalisation by users instead.

Imagine software that is built to create value for the user not just the investor. Software designed with a focus on how it will serve the user best.

Imagine…and now build it. Your focus determines where you end up.

Small decisions that make a BIG impact 💥.

The continuation of our past is not our future

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future is now

Just finished reading for the 3rd time the recent report from the swiss Zukunftsinstitut.

“The road to new growth strategies requires resilience instead of efficiency”

Highly recommended reading if you are interested in looking forward for what can be…

➡ Link to the complete report:  Whitepaper-The_Economy_After_Corona copy  ⬅️

Snippets:

“The next few months will be a window of opportunity, and the course set will have a lasting impact on the coming years, in society and the economy as well as each individual company.“

“For organisations, the most important thing is to switch to the learning mode.”

“Nostalgia may be a private matter, but not a functioning program for the future. Therefore, the new motto is: Let it go – let the world before Corona go. Its continuation is not our future”

“What it now needs most of all is decision-making ability and self-organisation. In every single company.”

“In order to gain an edge in the new game, it is less important how large or financially strong a company is. In- stead, ingenuity is now required: “Ingenuity, not just financial muscle, will become a source of advantage, allowing cleverer firms to operate closer to full speed”

“The next few weeks will be a decisive moment for all companies to set course. Will the leap into a resilience movement towards new, glocal and adaptive networks succeed? Or is there only the way out into an old and definitely tougher competition? Now is the time of op- portunity for new approaches!”

➡ Link to the complete report:  Whitepaper-The_Economy_After_Corona copy  ⬅️

The Lazy-Eight: transformation ⍙ needed

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The Holling (1986) lazy–eight adaptive cycle model (Fig. 1) is a powerful and useful metaphor of system dynamics that includes four stages: expansion, preservation, renewal, and innovation

Predicting the future

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Today there are more futurologists out there than the total sum of “self-declared expert” national football coaches, presidents of nations and health experts in virology together.

There is a type of of futurologists I find interesting though.

Enter the “The Builders” -> Predicting the future by creating it.

Marc Andreessen & his VC squad wrote a challenging piece recently “It´s time to build“. Check it out.
Triple AAA: Actionable – Ambitious – A-political.
What will you build?

Tim Sweeney & the gaming gang on the metaverse. “Fortnite and the metaverse”
Going beyond the internet.
How to escape the stronghold of Facebook, Google, Apple,…?

Marc Cuban & his entrepreneurial posse on challenges and avenues for action. “What would you do as president“.
Particularly interesting how Cuban mentions existing trends with transformative power.
How do we amplify transformative trends for the better?

Striking how all of them try to predict the future by asking questions, invite to action, look for perspective and see transformation as a way forward.

Maybe, just maybe, we can learn from their approach?

It will be harder for sure than sitting back and consuming what is fed to us.
But it might just be more rewarding and have a real impact if we do…

Small decisions with a BIG impact 🤜🏻.

 

The dark horse

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Every day we choose between 3 approaches for everything we do:

  • Custom, tailor-made, one-off
  • Personalised, configured, repeatable
  • One-size-fits-all, standard, commoditised

But when we make our choices are we consistent, smart, see them in context?

Ask which of the 3 approaches you choose in the following cases:

  • connecting with our customers
  • drafting and sending proposals
  • delivering control or audiovisual systems
  • hire and fire
  • remuneration
  • training
  • service
  • making cars, speakers, systems,…
  • …

I dare to think we all use far too much custom and standard approaches…

When the personalised, configured, repeatable approach is the dark horse* in the race for success.

Custom is overrated

One-size-fits-all is overused

Personalisation is the dark horse…

Asking ourself some simple questions may have a big impact 🤜🏻 💥

*Definition “dark horse”:
a candidate or competitor about whom little is known but who unexpectedly wins or succeeds