Toward a Successful Digital Business Network – Step 2

It's time to take the second step in building an effective digital business network and review organizational and technological options.

Once the senior management have drawn up their overall digitalization plan, the next decisions that you need to make are which type of organization to use in the transformation into digital processes and which type of technology or service to use to enable this digitalization.

The second step: Organization and technology options

The most important things in the entire project are the people you select and the organizational model you use. As digitalization projects always involve all the other companies in the business network, not just your own company, it is vital to define how the process will be managed. The company or its selected partner must have extensive support from the business network and an understanding of how to broaden this network as the operating environment changes. The organization must also have the technical resources and people who understand the business.

The type of technology selected will depend on the type of organizational model chosen by the company. Of course, it is essential to decide whether it is better, from the perspective of the company’s business, to retain the technology element as an internal service, or to purchase it from an external provider. You can often achieve a good balance if, for example, the technical expertise and service are purchased from an external provider, while the business architecture is retained as an internal strategic function.

The technology selected should enable an extensive business network, service connections to operators and interfaces of different sizes, development and change management, and 24/7 support services.

These matters should be considered from the perspective of the organization model and the technology options. And next time we will already be ready to launch the first practical measures towards digitalization.

You can read the other parts of this blog series here:

Successful Digital Business Network in 5 Steps

Toward a Successful Digital Business Network - Step 1

Toward a Successful Digital Business Network - Step 3

Toward a Successful Digital Business Network - Step 4

Toward a Successful Digital Business Network - Step 5

Heikki Pulli

The writer has fifteen years of experience in customer-focused business development, particularly electronic supply chain management, electronic invoicing, and integration and data management solutions. At OpusCapita, he is working with B2B integration solutions and for promoting digital business networks among customers and stakeholders.