What is a connected company?
Connected companies are companies that thrive in the digital age. They know how to create new sources of value for their customers. They learn faster and move faster than their competitors. They are able to redefine and reuse their resources into new business areas. They tap into rich networks of peers and provide value to their existing and new customers. Connected companies focus on outcomes and experience instead of assembly line effectiveness.
How a non-connected company becomes connected: 10 principles to achieve success
Looking back at our own experiences and with the ideas of experts like Dave Gray, author of The Connected Company in mind we have tried to determine what are the key success factors on becoming digital savvy and connected. We found that in order to achieve agility, you need to focus on: structure, feedback and adaptability.
We describe this approach as 10 guiding principles:
- Don’t create projects, but create a platform to support your connected endeavors. This platform will help you to lead the digital transformation and provides you with the agility to extend and adapt as you learn and grow.
- The future system is a network. Govern your platform following this network structure and involve all relevant groups and stakeholders in order to support. A connected company is a network that lives together with other networks.
- A connected company platform is comprehensive. Maximize the development time spent on building things that provide value to you and your customers. Choose technology that can provide all the necessary building blocks without having to loose time on lack of coherence and compatibility, while remaining open and using standards to be able to connect at any given time with any given peer.
A connected platform is built on following architecture principles:
- Business API first. No service is built without any API. Your peers might use a user interface to work with your services, but chances are they want to plug your service directly in to their back end systems.
- A connected architecture is portable. Being a critical part in your digital strategy, you don’t want to be stuck on any hosting platform and you want changes to pass through the test environments without a hassle.
- The architecture components are small and loosely coupled.
- Business API first. No service is built without any API. Your peers might use a user interface to work with your services, but chances are they want to plug your service directly in to their back end systems.
- Be podular, to provide autonomy. Follow the example of successful start-ups: they work with small informal teams in which employees and customers feel connected to each other. Create your own functional units that operate as autonomous companies within your company.
- Adapt an agile methodology to deliver value faster. Connected companies learn from their experiences. The effect of change is measured so they know where to invest next.
- Focus on desires, not on needs. Remain vigilant when relying too much on past knowledge, but focus on the desired outcomes and experience.
- Apply a design first approach to provide prime experiences for your customers and employees. Be personal because in the end people determine your success
- Now is imperative.
- Provide intelligence by learning and being predictive. Find a way to share your knowledge.
And last but not least…
- Provide service anywhere, on any devices, any time.
Do you want to know more about becoming a connected company, please contact our expert Roel De Cuyper, Division Manager The Connected Company via roel.decuyper@realdolmen.com.