Steps To Bulletproof Startups Digital Business Strategy

By Rahul Bhargava, Chief Technology & Product Officer, InCred 

The sudden COVID crisis that has left the people to live at a distance from each other seems to be temporary but might stay for long. The halt in the economy has left firms with new challenges of keeping their finances flowing.

Unfortunately, it is the startups and small businesses that are more adversely affected owing to low cash reserves and lesser margin to manage the sudden downfall. Major sectors in the Indian economy are at a halt resulting in low revenues. It is further expected that India’s growth rate, which was earlier predicted to be around 4-5%, will slip down to 2% in FY2020-2021. 

Businesses, no matter how established they were, are left with no other option but to re-look and revamp their business strategy. By targeting both the brick-and-mortar business model and online sales strategically, firms can successfully adapt to the changing scenario during and after the crisis. 

Firms, especially startups, can follow these steps to bulletproof their digital business strategy during and post the pandemic.

• Consider ‘digital’ in the context of overall business strategy: Most of the businesses are going digital, and it is natural for startups to gravitate towards the same. But, before deciding whether the firm needs to go digital, it should take a moment to analyse whether it’s feasible for their business to go online and serve the customers that way. Firms should also examine what they expect to achieve with digital? For instance, is it to lower the operating cost or to increase the reach among target customers? Also, businesses need to analyse what or if they will sell online; is it a retail item, a service, or a food-service? The digital strategies, though they appear to be similar, are different for each of the business goals.
• Analyse digital marketing pitfalls: Digital marketing is undoubtedly the need of the hour and is incredibly powerful, but it too comes with its own set of pitfalls. Before setting up a digital business strategy in place, firms should understand digital marketing by looking at successful as well as failed digital marketing strategies. They should watch their Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) carefully as the paid digital marketing costs can grow exponentially and spiral out of control. Companies need to hire experts in the field with a lot of analytics and data to put their website, social media campaigns, paid marketing, as well as organic traffic in place.

• Study the product being offered: Digital marketing seems to be tempting, leaving organizations thinking that they can sell their products or services online. It is not a big deal to have a website in place anymore. But there is a lot more which the firms should consider. The foremost thing here is to study the product or service they are planning to offer online. Does it require assisted selling, how will the product be delivered to the end-user? The packaging and shipping costs, the medium which the firm should adopt to deliver their product or service, and the customer expectation regarding what is being offered – All this requires a lot of effort and money on the part of the organization. Firms too need to decide whether they wish to create a new digital brand, which is not as easy as it seems to be, or want to associate with a large e-commerce platform.

• Consider website and mobile strategy: While creating a website, it is crucial to focus on the design and the brand. The website should be easy to navigate and should be user-friendly. It should be easier for customers to find what they are looking for. Apart from the website, firms need to consider a mobile strategy. Nearly half of the e-commerce sales, which are expected to value $845 billion by the year 2020, are likely to be coming from mobile devices. Hence, businesses need to think mobile first when going digital.

• Examine all processes and workflows: Going digital is an organizational change which needs to be embraced within the organization first. The employees and the management should be in-line with the new digital vision.  The firm should critically see if the introduction of digital technology is making their workflow more accurate, faster and cheaper. The internal customer experience, i.e., of the employees, should be taken care of by integrating the various departments of the organization. Good technology is essential not only to satisfy the external users but also to increase the productivity of the employees manifolds.

• Consider online security: When designing the digital strategy, businesses need to consider online security. When a firm goes digital, it also opens itself to hackers and scammers. Before taking any step further, the firm should ensure adequate protection using antivirus, firewalls, and VPNs for protecting data breach to safeguard the interests of the firm, the employees and the customers.

Digital business strategy is an ongoing process which requires the firms to work on the above steps continuously and to redesign their business strategy as and when the need arises. The firms need to be forward-thinking and customer-focused when planning to go digital, which is undoubtedly a silver-lining for firms in times of crisis like COVID-19.