Digital Native Organizations For The Win In 2022 & Beyond

Over the last couples of years, we have seen a significant rise in digitally-enabled organizations making headways into several segments such as Healthcare, Learning, Payments, Commerce, Business Operations, Supply Chain, and many more. These disruptive players are also called Digital Native Organizations (DNOs). DNOs are attracting the attention from investors and customers- and for a good reason. Despite their newness in the market, DNOs are a force to reckon with, given their expertise in creating exciting solutions and services catering to a digitally-savvy target audience, irrespective of the industry, sector, category, or geography one operates in.

The pandemic has forced every organization to go digital, and today we are already witnessing traditional organizations adopting large-scale digital transformation programs and expanding their horizons to meet changing customer and business requirements. But as time goes by, can traditional organizations transform into truly DNOs?

By definition, digital natives can mean either:

• Individuals born during the digital age (post-2000s when technology like the internet, computers and mobile devices became mainstream)
• People immersed in computers and technology from an early age, who use technology in all aspects of their lives

If you ask me, the term resonates most with individuals or companies whose premise for existence is digital. Given their focus on technology, DNOs are far more agile in reacting to market conditions and can scale their operations quicker, given their focus on new-age technologies. Here are some of the key attributes that can help organizations transform into a DNO:

• The ability to innovate at pace and scale their operations faster than traditional businesses
• Driven by customer-centric employees who regularly take risks or are ready to embrace risks to create out-of-the-box solutions
• Built on an inherent foundation of technology
• Can serve and expand to a wider ecosystem using digital

For a traditional organizations to compete with these disruptors, they must find ways to acquire these capabilities and be ready to embrace technology in the true sense. Traditional companies should no longer be just 'doing' digital in bits and pieces but instead, need to be digital-first in their overall strategy, which involves a complete reimagining of the organization's structure, values and business focus, which we encapsulate simply as:

• Being Digital at Heart: By reimagining the possibilities for Digital transformation from innovation to growth
• Being Digital in Thinking: Scalability, manageability, robustness, and efficiency is the top priority, always
• Being Digital in Approach: From planning a digital transformation strategy that captures present and future disruptions to minute detail, ensuring high-quality deliveries every time

The overall digital strategy will help organizations transform to digital natives and they can replicate the advantage held by DNOs:

1. Using a lean-agile approach to ensure that the organization can steer and shift gears rapidly as the situation may demand
2. Creating a culture that thrives on innovation, not as a responsibility of a single department but by providing avenues and opportunities to go beyond the conventional
3. Focusing on customer delight - by incorporating actionable feedback mechanisms and creating data-driven structures (e.g., leveraging customer data to be actionable using advanced data capturing, data analytics, behavioral insights, and other mechanisms)
4. Expanding their workplace and business values to go fully embrace digital and remote. DNOs are rapidly gaining space with their unique talent attraction and retention policy, and traditional businesses need to alter their strategies to attract a diverse range of talent to their brand

This is just the beginning for established players to model DNOs and ensure they too can be agile, scale efficiently and be ready for future disruptions by incorporating the best that technology offers. Born in 2000, e-Zest has always believed in that being a digitally native organization will be imperative for future success. We have successfully imbibed innovation and technology to grow and prosper in an era of constant flux and have been the partner of choice for multiple organizations that are now successfully leveraging transformational technologies to go beyond the traditional.

If you are considering to embrace the values of being fully digital, reach out to our experts who bring the right mix of business and technology expertise that is a necessity in this digitally-native future.