Creating a digital strategy is a critical endeavor that will impact your organization’s direction for the next 5-10 years (at least). Here are three common mistakes we see teams making and how to avoid them.

Thinking Too Small

This is the time to think big about new opportunities that can really affect every department within your organization – Consumers, Customers, Clients, or Vendors. It can also impact every aspect of your company – product offerings, marketing strategies, supply chains, routes-to-market, business processes, just to name a few. Let your team dream big and visualize all the potential ways digital solutions can change your industry by creating a comprehensive digital strategy.

Thinking Too Narrowly

Many people have pre-conceived notions of digital – just being marketing-related, or just being related to mobile technology. This issue is often compounded when one pain-point or initiative is top of mind at the time you are creating a strategy. In today’s age, the ubiquitous impact of digital means your digital strategy should touch every department. Let us bring our industry expertise to help you be inclusive of all your stakeholders.

Thinking Too Short-Term

Your digital strategy should be long-term, but your execution shouldn’t. Plan out the next 5 years of your strategy, then use Agile Thinking to start implementing that strategy and realizing the benefits immediately. Long-term thinking will let you be ambitious with the goals that you set. You likely have a few big ideas right now, but don’t let your brainstorming start there. Start thinking through what your business will look like once those big ideas are accomplished.

“What’s next?”

“Where do we go from here?”

Then build a plan to begin realizing the benefits of you strategic plan as quickly as possible. Use agile thinking to get start rolling out your digital solutions to users early, then gather insights and feedback to refine your strategy. Continue to iterate on your ideas and make improvements over time.

Creating a digital strategy is an exciting time. Be ambitious and let us help you be successful!