Today, companies of all shapes and sizes are starting to use digital technology to overcome the limitations of the physical world. The power of digitization of business processes can be recognized as a catalyst not just for driving enterprise scale and efficiency, but for helping to deliver focused innovation with much greater precision and speed.
New advances in this field also allow them to release their products to the market faster, to reach the right customers, while offering a nearly perfect user experience.
We’ve already gone into the details about reasons your company might benefit from the digitization of business processes in an earlier article. Just to list a few, you might need to digitize in order to:
- address disruption in your industry,
- improve everyday efficiency,
- improve customer/user experience,
- utilize new channels to their full potential,
- extend services to mobile users,
- shorten your supply chain,
- utilize emerging new technologies, etc.
In this article, we are focusing more on the ways you can validate your approach to the digitization of business processes or test specific concepts both internally and externally.
Ways to Validate the Digitization of Business Processes
1. See how other industry players did it
It is possible that your idea is not unique at all. Through a simple online search, you can discover products that might have germinated from a similar idea-seed. It is better to think of a new idea if your concept does not offer something extra special or improves the way of doing things.
2. Present the concept to employees early
If you are planning to introduce a new digital tool into your current workflow, it is highly beneficial – if not essential – to hear the perspective of the employees who will actually use it to carry out their day to day work tasks. This can be done in a similar way as user acceptance testing with a customer-facing MVP.
It is also recommended to simply present the concept of the new solution before starting any development, in order to include the users’ ideas into the software requirements and design. This may save you a substantial amount of money spent on fixing/rewriting counter-intuitive or inefficient software features.
3. Hypothesis Testing
You can assess the viability of a new digital solution via hypothesis testing methodology, without developing a product prototype. You can use either a Wizard of Oz MVP or a Concierge MVP to validate your business idea.
Concierge MVP: You provide the value proposition manually to a small group of test users, without involving any technology. You perform the service following the same steps as the final product.
Wizard of Oz MVP: In this method, you make the test users believe that the new digital solution is already able to complete a certain task. They see the working front of your product (this is often solved by using clickable design wireframes), while there is no actual code running in the background yet.
4. Single-Feature MVP
Single-feature minimal viable product (MVP) enables you to test one core aspect of your digital solution. You give your end-users this one-core-feature product to use, to get early feedback. It is one of the easiest methods by which you can validate or invalidate the digitization of business processes, and you can do so on a shoestring budget.
Now that you have a basic idea about how to validate a concept, you can get creative and start presenting to your employees to find out firsthand if your idea really has merit or not.
Summary
Digitization of business processes offers some important new changes and opportunities for modern enterprises, big and small alike. Leadership should be encouraged to always question the traditional way of doing business, and periodically rethink the entire company in order to succeed in this rapidly changing environment.
Other than opportunities, the digital revolution will definitely bring many new challenges as well. This is why it is more important than ever for you to follow the latest trends and developments, not only for your company, but for your entire value chain.
FAQ:
Why is it worth digitizing business processes in a company?
Digitizing processes helps increase efficiency, shorten turnaround times, improve user and customer experience, leverage new channels (e.g. mobile), and respond to market changes faster and more accurately. With digital solutions, you can bring products to market more quickly, reach the right customers more effectively, and run your business more cost‑efficiently.
How can I validate whether a new digital solution will actually be useful for my company?
First, it’s worth looking at how other players in your industry have solved similar problems. Then present the idea to future users – for example, your own employees – and ask for feedback before any development starts. You can also use a hypothesis-based approach (Concierge MVP, Wizard of Oz MVP), where you initially deliver the service manually or in a “seemingly” digital way to see whether it really creates value. Finally, with a single-feature MVP you can test one core function on its own before making a larger investment.
What are a Concierge MVP, a Wizard of Oz MVP, and a single-feature MVP, and when should I use them?
With a Concierge MVP, you replace the digital solution “by hand”: you serve test users manually without any technology, but you follow the same steps the future application would. With a Wizard of Oz MVP, users see what looks like a working interface (for example, a clickable wireframe), but there is no complete system behind it yet and the processes are still run by you or your team. A single-feature MVP is a minimal product that contains only one core function, allowing you to quickly and cheaply test whether that specific digital solution has real value in the eyes of users.
If you want to explore how digitizing your business processes can drive growth and efficiency, please fill out our consultation form.
