5 important pieces to successfully develop a digital initiative

5 important pieces to successfully develop a digital initiative

According to industry estimates, roughly 80% of digital initiatives ultimately fail. Why? Many digital initiatives are conducted as side experiments, are focused on incremental enhancements to a user experience, aren’t scalable or don’t address significant problems related to broken processes. A more holistic approach can combat that – think big, start small, put humans at center, and scale quickly. 

How do you successfully move from an idea to developing and running a digital program? At Cognizant, we offer a complete approach to digital projects where we guide clients throughout the process: from digital vision and direction, to design, delivery and management. Our digital transformation journey includes the following:

  1. Your digital guide. Imagine a destined digital guide that will accompany you on your transformation journey to ensure the overall purpose is fulfilled and the process smooth. The guide helps to phrase your digital vision; Where do you have to be in five years? Where do you want to be in ten years? Industry expertise, tech knowledge, and a global track record are cornerstones in a vision. Any advice? Aim high from the beginning.
  2. The digital compass. Now you know where you want to go, but how do you get there? Time to set directions and this is something we do in a structured way. At Cognizant Collaboratory, a network of physical spaces for digital innovation, ideation, and collaboration, clients come to work on digital solutions together with designers, strategists, technologists and data scientists. The facilities integrate elements like IoT and AI in a practical, creative way that will help companies to innovate securely and quickly.
  3. Humans at center. Each Collaboratory provides clients with access to end-to-end managed innovation offerings — integrating human insight, strategy, design, and analytics. Why is human behavior that important? Because when automation, analytics and AI meet psychologists, anthropologists and designers, the real magic happens. To our help, we have experts like digital agency Mirabeau with knowledge of how design can match end-consumers’ behavior, and strategy consulting company ReD Associates, specialized in helping companies infuse social science insights into new solutions.
  4. No big bangs – think MVP. In a market economy that’s both fast-moving and uncertain, businesses need to get comfortable with the idea of going to market with a minimum viable product (MVP). Strong leadership and deep expertise are required to identify the most critical value proposition to test in the real world and, when necessary, pivot to a different approach if the first release fails. Think big, start small; we have an accelerator methodology for managed innovation to help you move rapidly from idea to prototype and then scale-up.
  5. Global mindset, onsite team.Our goal is to launch within 8–12 weeks. At your service, you have the muscles of +260,000 professionals, and the mix of onsite, offshore and nearshore resources helps you design, pilot, launch, iterate, and ultimately, successfully run your viable solution. In a typical client engagement, the onsite team handles 25–30% of the workload, and the rest is handled by one of over 100 global development and delivery centers around the world.

The journey to digital requires thinking big and executing in fast strikes. It requires innovating with purpose while delivering results for the business. All of this is possible, and we can accompany you all along the different phases to envision, build, and run your new digital offering.

Learn more about how to develop viable digital offers by joining our Snapshot Breakfasts on From What to How.