The essential skills of the 'XMarketer' - Marketing Leaders who drive digital transformation. (#21)

The purpose of today's Podcast is talk about how a multi gear - or two speed business can enable better digital maturity.

Well first up, what is a multi speed business?
It's a business that uses different services or products to create slightly different business models that are moving slower or faster than the current business.

Why would a business investigate this type of structure?
Often to iron out more volatile cashflow cycles or to open up new market share. But always to solve a problem for their customer ......

For example, a business doing a sales cycle of 6 weeks might create a business line that shortens sales cycle to 1 week, therefore creating a different dynamic across sales, marketing, cashflow and customer service.

How can this enable better digital transformation and ultimately a more mature business?
Well first, let's look at what a digitally mature business is.
Stage 1 - using basic digital tools to improve business operations, eg. email, website
Stage 2 - using advanced digital tools to improve business efficiency , eg. cloud storage, e-commerce, social media, IOT / big data.
Stage 3 - using digital platforms to transform business operations, eg. ERP, supply chain management, channel sales, CRM
Stage 4 - creating new business models on the back of the digital platforms you have and therefore creating a multi speed businessA multi speed business uses digital maturity to spin off new services like cogs in a machine that add value to the core but enable a new customer offering.

OK, so what's an example, let's get practical
OK - we'll for some shameless self promotion, Blirt has recently launched a service called http://www.cloudmart.com.au

It's a good example of a two speed business - customers get fast, quick turnarounds on small and simple CRM projects, whilst we focus on the more complex people intensive projects through our primary consultancy of Blirt.

Where else do we see this?
One that we'd all know is McDonalds and McCafe.... or Apple with product sales vs subscription sales.
In fact, subscriptions are a great way of launching two speed business models.

We often talk about new business initiatives as adventures and the world of adventuring has a concept that works really nicely..... explain Expedition vs Light & Fast. We give a big plug to https://patrickhollingworth.com and his book The Light and Fast Organisation

What can a business leader do to get practical?
Well, think about where you challenges are and where the market opportunities are, at that intersection is where your problem solving should start. Don't start a new venture just because you it sounds like a good idea - it must solve a problem for the customer.