Digitization is no more just a buzz word with the world getting more virtual than ever before. Companies that do not have a Digital presence could find themselves struggling with business outreach/customer connect. This also with the myriad platforms that the customer can connect with you. The complexities are multiplied when it comes to companies that have constrained budget and that's why it's critical that the initial Investments are hyper optimised.

Organisations should evaluate objectives critically and ensure that they have not only documented the objectives but also clearly chalked out the process that they will follow to achieve these. This is equally important when you are trying to maximize the benefits of existing digitization initiatives

If you are still looking for these answers then a good starting point would be the the 4M approach

1. You are Measuring outcomes
2. Map out the process that you want to be executed/have in place
3. Ensure you have the right Metrics in place to monitor progress
4. Creating a blueprint of what is a Minimal viable system within your budget

Once you have these you are ready to go and build your system

So how does one approach this?

Let’s consider that you want to build a business in education. Assuming that your objective in this case is to generate revenue/income basis subscriptions.

Step 1:

Outcome Measure = Revenue generated/Students registered

While advertising will be an important component of your initial outreach this article will focus on subsequent steps

Step 2:

Map out the process that you want to be followed

Document the first time right process would be

• User logs in to the website
• User system Interaction design: Designing user interaction with the system. Some examples of good content
• Continue onwards from a course that was left behind
• Overall progress dashboard
• Recommendations Are some examples of what needs to be considered.
• Configuration screens and Analytics/Reports are good candidates for optimizing but could limit your user experience for the more inquisitive ones and could add more work to your team
• What audit trails would you like to have in your system
• What are the different levels of accesses needed

Make sure all exceptions in the process map are configured in the system

For the example we are considering if a user registration fails the system should be capable of handling it.

Step 3

Ensure you have the right metrics in place to monitor Process

There is no need to teach anyone that outcomes depend on actions. But do we monitor our actions and track those. Do we define the right metrics to track these actions. For example there is a difference in tracking the

Number of videos with that are favorited : Which tells us how popular the content is

Percentage of videos that are favorited : Which also gives us an idea of what type of videos we need to focus

Its critical to have a well thought through system with the right metrics defined to ensure that you can

• Create exactly the kind of content that people like
• Improve the content that have lower clicks and views

While a lot of these relations can be hypothesized and metrics can be designed to be tracked as you begin your journey, continued business success will be greatly improved by how well these correlations are understood and subsequently relevant content is churned out.

The frequency at which this needs to be done and reviewed really depends on the stage of business you are in and what industry you operate in. There are no black and white answers and in such scenarios the best options is starting at higher frequencies like reviewing data weekly/bi-weekly and modifying the frequency as you move along.

Step 4

Creating a blueprint of what a Minimum Viable system

Once you are ready with all the business requirements it becomes imperative to create a system blueprint to validate that what you think you will get is what you will actually get. This is just like creating drawings/sketches for a building instead of creating the building and asking you if it's ok. Its optimizes the effort and thereby cost.

Adherence to this process will ensure you have a system that meets your expectations in terms of

• User experience
• Insights to what you need to do to drive specific business outcomes
• All these while having a clear understanding of system capabilities and constraints

Contact us at bd@phaidelta.com for guidance with system architecture design consulting.