Digital Business: Challenges, Opportunities, And Strategies

Development of Digital Business Industry

Digital business is a development of new industry designed blurring physical and digital world. It has promised to usher an unprecedented convergence of things, business and people disrupting current business models.

A digital edge has been existing where physical resources and digital information has been combing new ways for creating revenue and value. Enterprises asking digital side have been transforming business models, customer experiences and converting processes.  

The following report discusses processes of new venture formation and argumentation for Decision Lens’s business model or systems and resources at U.K. It has also included believable marketing, budget and sales forecast, market research and planning and costing.

The proposed business plan is a digital store. Thus, it is required to provide a quick history of the products as well as explain the primary market as well as the solution of the organization. It is necessary for the business owner and management of the organization to show the market opportunity to the investors. As the present digital store is dealing with rememorizing the old trends and stylized product, the proposed business can bring enormous business opportunities to the market. Identifying the following areas can be explained as followed.

Market and industry consist of identifying market size, segmentation of the market, development of market prospects, focusing on new trends as well as technologies and barriers to entry. Demonstration of complete comprehension of the challenges from the outside competitors in large as well as small is essential for the management to attract investors in large scale. It consists of an explanation of the products of competitors, distribution channels, partnerships as well as pricing. Development of the factors can bring competitive benefits as well as positioning need to be analyzed well in the organization.

Customers, as well as end users, are essential for any organization. Hence, the proposed business plan needs to outline for the target customers for products or services. Sales, as well as marketing strategies, are required to manage in the organization. Sales and marketing strategy will get the particular product into the hands of the customer. It provides a revenue model as well as explains the sales cycle and procedure. Products and services emphasize the specific products or services that include photos or screenshots. Detailing the product is scalable as well as planning to launch the whether it is already done. Providing outline research and development steps to develop and enhance offering. The competitive advantages of online shopping and supporting 24*7 hours in 365 days are required to highlight to the investors. On the other hand, it is necessary to emphasize on the digital a store can bring investors in a large number. Financials need including the fundamental assumptions as well as providing the scenarios are required to show to the investors.

New Venture Formation

Sourcing of funding as well as using the proceeds explain investment by principals, prior equity investments, cash operations of the business need to be planned efficiently along with total funds are required to design by the management of the organization. Utilization of proceeds can be helpful to use the process of funding.  The instances may consist of sales as well as marketing, research as well as development, recruitment of costs and salaries of new employees. The equipment, expenses of capital, legal and accounting are the total amount of targeting to raise outside financing. Based on the proper timelines for achieving the milestones and detailing the actions of the team emphasize on the development of the value of the organization. The effects need consisting the key hires, new financing, milestones of sales, launching of new products as well as strategic partnerships.

Also, the organization needs to finalize an initial investment in the business. It is important to control to relinquish to the investors. However, planning of short and long-term profit is significant for the proposed business plane. The investors expect a return on their money. Thus, rough planning regarding the way of gaining profit is required by the business organization for showing the investors. Along with these, projected profits of the proposed business over the time would be helpful for the organization. However, ensuring that the business will not fail in upcoming days may bring some investors for the organization. It is also important for the company to set up plan and include procedures that can be able to mitigate the risks and challenges faced by the company. 

Decision Lens is a leading SaaS organization situated at U.K. It has been transforming enterprise supply chains. With the help of advanced flexible and analytics, custom visualizations, a small business in the UK quickly witness effects and trade-offs of choices made between various investment options. Here Decision Lens helps in improving quality and speed of prioritization and optimization maximizing ROI of their portfolio.

Industrial leaders of Decision Lens have been digitizing essential functions under their internal processes of vertical operations and horizontal partners across the value chain. Additionally, they have been developing product portfolios with introducing innovative data-based services and digital functionalities. A survey is done to employees of Decision Lens. They are expected to raise their entire digitalization level dramatically.

These developments fundamentally change individual companies and transforming market dynamics around a complete industrial range. It has been crucial for countries around the world. The annual digital revenue has been seen to be increasing on about 29% on an average.

Marketing, Budget, and Sales Forecast

Cost reductions for Decision Lens are seen to be of 3.6% on an average per year. Digital technologies have been enabling shorter operational lead times, maximum quality of products and higher asset usage. For generating those extra revenues, businesses have introduced latest industrial products with digital features and augmenting their current portfolio . Digital services by data analytics and complete digital solutions have served as a customer ecosystem. This has been driving the breakthrough growth of revenue. Further, digital businesses have been showing a strong commitment towards investment. Industrial sectors have been planning to commit about thousand dollars per year. Primary focus on such investments has been on digital technologies such as connectivity devices or sensors along with software and applications such as manufacturing execution frameworks. Moreover, Decision Lens has been investing in training staffs and driving needed organizational changes. Half of the investments have been expecting a payback within a couple of years.

The greatest challenge for industrial leaders of Decision Lens has not been technology. The main problem is individual members. As digital technologies have been turning into a commodity very rapidly, success has been highly depending on organizations digital IQ. This has been particularly in the way how digital leaders such as CEO, CTO and CIO has defined, lead and communicated transformation. It has also been depending on digital qualifications of staffs that require rolling out digital services and processes. However, radical disruptions have not always been comfortable for people who have been making that happen. Hence change management has also been crucial. With data analytics turning out to be core compatibility for all industrial company, development for skills and organizational structures has been critical.

These can be achieved by digitization of service and product offerings. It involves expansion of current products. Example of this is an addition of smart sensors or communication devices that could be used with tools of data analytics and creating new digitized products. This is done by focusing on entirely integrated solutions. Through an integration of new methods of data analysis and collection, a business can develop data on product use and refining products for meeting increasing necessities of end-customers.

The step of competency matrix of instant tea that has been supported by well-chosen, good and expert directors is demonstrated hereafter. Firstly the key roles of the digital business organization of Decision Lens are chosen. Then the competencies needed for every role is listed. Competencies listed could be very much through. As there are many items on that list, it is proposed that they are clustered. This includes technical skills, business acumen and leadership skills and many more. Then the name of every individual is listed. Next, it is to be determined how one wants to code the matrix for indicating training needed skill level and so on. Further, a matrix for every person is to be filled out . This can be done using the coding system for indicating existing skills and skill gaps. Lastly, areas of need, opportunities and patterns are needed to be checked.

Market Research and Planning

In digital businesses, a primary responsibility of project manager of Decision Lens has not been to supply projects within budget and time. At a high level strategic body, first and foremost professionals of project management is to help drive, execute and guide value-added and company-identified goals. Project management offices have more likely been well received by executives and stakeholders of a company. They have been as an indispensable strategic partner as they get recognized for their true strategic value.

Goals	Achievement of goals
Developing citizen data science program	Within digital world, every department possesses challenges to become more data-driven and leveraging data under decision making. As one faces skills of data science, a citizen data science program can be developed. This must be aimed towards engaging more data-savvy people working under operations, finance, marketing and various other departments working with large data.
A defining backlog of improvements in the agile process	Various programs of digital transformation need a rise in application development and programs of digital marketing for developing products and improving customer experiences and increasing automation. As one has not generated any evolving governance practice, taking feedback from retrospectives of an agile team and drives any process improvement, then it must be considered as a goal.
Innovating with new technologies	Various transformation agendas must involve research, pilot projects and proof of concepts leveraging new technologies. As technical innovation has been already an integral part of business priorities, then methods to track and report goals, accomplishments, learning and pivots are to be considered. As business priorities never include technical research and development, and then it is to be believed how to recognize smaller opportunities for doing some experimentation.
Demonstrating the effect of automation	Digital business has various new opportunities to transfer beyond bimodal-IT and cloud infrastructure. This can be done by investing in DevOps automation and culture. Some digital companies can invest in continuous integration and deployment for improving speed to market. The other digital businesses migrate more on cloud environments to containers and different configurations that are software defined. However, others have been focusing on improving test coverage and develop more end-to-end monitoring of applications.
Communicating results, small wins, and changes in a program	It is the most vital goal. This is a multi-year journey and has been very common to lose interest on stakeholders under long-running programs. It has been particularly the case as end-points require evolving with market conditions and as entire industries have been transforming. The roadmap for digital business of Decision Lens can be about two years long by what is known. However, it can extend easily as various digital strategies evolve.

A promise of digital business has been that universe of applications and digitalized resources have been working together automatically allows rapid development of new capabilities. It has been yielding competitive advantage. Reality has been that millions of businesses, human and things have been inter-connected together needs sophisticated orchestration, integration, engineering for fulfilling a promise of future things, people and business.

Exploring latest business models for Decision Lens has been putting customer experiences at the core of digital strategies. Digital businesses have been demanding to spend more and more for compelling customer experience. This has turned out to be a primary differentiator within digital economy. Business models have been aligning with a hyper-focus on customer satisfaction that has been eventually at the centre on digital services. This is because digital has been increasingly experiencing what people had preferred.  

A business pan plays a significant role in managing and developing business.  Hence, a well-designed business plan lays out a vision of development as well as steps required for that . A plan is a necessary communication tool to attract financing and managers as well as staffs as the business develops. The present study deals with the proposal of a business plan to start a small business venture.  A digital business of Virtual stock is selected as a case study. A clear case to recognize the opportunities lied in the business is described in the present study . Also, risks associated with sub-sectors and standard business plan of winning confidence of the investors are discussed in the present study.

In the present case, it is vital to understand the business opportunity for digital market business. In this perspective, it is required to emphasise on the core product, mapping the company and use marketing tools effectively. It is stated that in previous days, digital industry has become favourite among several people. It makes easy to sell online based products as there was an environment-friendly market. However, it is essential to increase for business as the business project is starting up.  Hence, management or owners of the organisation are required to reach some people a high-risk view impeccable in the industry.  

Target Customers and Sales Strategy

With the development of internet and mobile technology electronic business is increasing day by day. E-commerce business opens up a new opportunity in a market as it becomes very more natural for the customers to give order online and get the products at the doorstep. In this perspective, it is high-time for the new venture to set up effective plan and execute the programs correctly . However, as the online marketplace becomes in a larger, it also becomes difficult to set up an appropriate idea that can be helpful to attract some customers, retain existed customers for a long time and get competitive advantages.  

Starting up an online store can have some opportunities like uncovering scopes in the keywords, development of an entertaining as well as captivating brand, address and solve customer pain point as well as the passion of customers. Also, the online store may have opportunities like gaining own experience as well as expertise and capitalize on the trends at an early stage. 

Organic search traffic can be completely grain on e-commerce. Whether it is done appropriately, Google, as well as other search engines, will give reward with a massive number of continuous as well as targeted traffic. At current days, paid advertising channels are continuously getting expensive and precisely make the product with the keyword opportunities.  

On the other hand, use of social media can be helpful to attract some people for buying products from the online store. The venture can bring an enormous opportunity for the suppliers of the products. Selling the classical type of products can be helpful for them. As the rise of popularity of the business in digital market is increasing day by day, it is important to emphasise on quality counts. Digital marketing is liked by some people, as it is unique, economical and environment-friendly as well as timeless regarding longevity physically standing the test of time. On the other hand, using social media helps to find and retain customers. It assists in developing brand promotion, driving sales as well as interacting with the customers.

Murdock and Varnes (2018) mentioned that the internet had opened massive possibilities for a small business to start an online business as well as earn money from the web. An information-based website or a personal blog is monetized through advertising on e-commerce store. The internet becomes an essential business for an online store. However, several e-commerce businesses start a business without comprehending the risks evolved with it. Some of the dangers can damage the company. 

Financials and Funding

The target of the business needs to minimize the risks so that the company is not affected by extent. As the proposed transaction is based on web, some technologies might be faced. Changes in technology need to be able to catch up the changes that may need resources beyond the means of an online digital store.

On the other hand, the business is vulnerable to security threats and risks from malware to hacking to the security breach, which comprises information of credit card of the customers. There are also market-related risks, which are required to watch out. There are changes in the environment of business. The proposed transaction may also have some risks like the risk of losing primary income source, the risk of getting the website hacked, displeasing Google, infected with malware, penalized by a change of Google algorithm. Also, chances of losing traffic slowly, risks of downtime, not earning money, crappy web host and the risk of getting the website copied as well as contents plagiarized like risk might be involved with the proposed business plan.

Also, as the proposed business plan involves the business of online store, the owner may face several risks in managing sub-sectors. Inventory management is one of the dangers faced while dealing business with an online or digital store. To operate the type of online business, it is essential to keep an adequate supply of digital products. As there are several e-commerce websites are also involved in digital industry, it is critical to the proposed business to avail large stocks so that customers are interested in buying the items.

Trend evaluation is one of the leading risks for proposed business. As the proposed business plan deals with a digital store, it is also essential to analyze the current trends. Trends in a market are fickle and ever-changing. Thus, a successful store needs to capitalize on latest patterns as well as recognizes while the trends are declined. All errors may have an outcome in a significant amount of inventory and undermined credibility along with confused brand identity. As the proposed business plan is new, there will be risks for identifying brands.

On the other side, digital stores may incur several risks by developing marketing strategies. The particular business needs to target proper audience and provide items corresponding to demographics. Moreover, the brand needs to adapt to the changing economic conditions. The organizations purvey expensive products need to amend line including less costly clothes. Furthermore, the nature of digital store industry poses a high risk to the business owners in the UK.  Hence, it is required to develop effective strategies that would be helpful for mitigating the risks occurred in the sub-sector of the business.

Investment and Profit

It is important to set up an effective business plan and management of operation to set up a new business venture. The primary purpose of a business plan is defining the business. On the other hand, business evolves as well as adapt over time and factoring the future development along with direction into the business plan is an effective way for planning changes in the market. It is considered a vital tool to manage as well as develops the business. As currently proposed project deals with an online store, it is important to analyze current trends of a digital store in the market of the UK. On the other hand, it is also important to develop or give responsibilities to third parties for a safe and secure website for the business.

One of the huge issues in current advertising, especially for a digital business is believability factor for organizations. In many cases as customers see sales letter, email and advertisement sounding very good to be true, they instantly ignore that . In the current world, there is so much selling of snake oil taking place in digital business, that there have been no big claims made for them. They are simply ignored as junk by clients.

Various marketers have seemed to think for advertising to gain the attention of people. However, the challenge is people are turning out to be so desensitized towards big claims that they have been ignoring them. Hence digital businesses of Decision Lens have been forced to think what they need to do as a marketer. Further, they need to determine how they mark their marketing and make advertising more believable.

Smart digital businesses must never think that they have been doing their best that is ever seen by the world. And, even that is true, customers might not believe them. All organizations state that what they have been selling their best . Hence there has been no believability anymore. This has just been a corporate hype and passed by one ear and out to other.

Another factor is that one can do that by toning that down a little bit. Stating that one can raise the output of company’s manufacturing by 6% initially over ten months is more believable than revealing that one raises manufacturing output of the digital business by 50% within one week. Here, the first claim was sounding to be possibly true. However, the second one also looks to be a smarter truth. Hence that will be in all possible likelihood be ignored.

Technology, Skills, and Change Management

As per as rolling out is concerned, it has seemed like digital transformation has existed everywhere these days. During the commencement of the previous year, industries around board have been affected by various newly formed digitalized organizations emerging at warp speed. It has been achieving market share from current companies lacking state-of-art solutions of digital business.

Notably, as digital transformation has been introducing exciting or new business models, processes and services in the current age of integration through digital technologies. A risk to be overtaken by new players in a digital world has been ever-existing and mind-numbing.

Moreover, it is recommended that whole numbers must not be used. A rise in 5.4% sounds more believable than 15%, 20% or 30%. Another tactic of sales that can be used by digital business is to incorporate testimonials where clients say how the service or product has helped them. Lastly, briefcase studies must be used for proving quantitatively how service and product have benefited customers.  Here the success key is that the case study is believable and is never over-hyped. Hence, prospects could put themselves in shoes of their clients.

Impact of digital business states vast stories. However, this is done differently. At the starting of every month, a re-imagined business section of the business website starts rolling out a special report on urgent topics. Digital businesses have been rolling out how companies have been fusing technology with psychology influencing the brand choice for changing the attitude and altering behavior. Every business day brings out the distinct viewpoint of a broader picture. This is done in the format of analysis piece, features, profile, interview often with visuals and video. Story lineup for a month is set in advance and one can scroll running of a table of contents in the right-hand column for various upcoming daily features.

The following Task Matrix is developed provides the detailed costing to be done.

Why digital business	Business issues	Desired results	Stakeholder pain chain	Solution	Category	Value Metric
For having best practices regarding project delivery	It costs highly and not to standardize project delivery	Reducing cost of every project and enhance productivity	Vice President, professional Services and others.	Workflow systems, project templates	Reducing cost, increase revenue	Cost per project, revenue per employee
Necessity of more proper billing.	Loss of money on work that are billed.	Reducing or eliminating revenue leakage.	Same as before	Time and billing solution, supporting billing and rate dependencies.	Rise in revenue	Maximizing revenue per consultant and per client.
Improving time on billing projects	Recognizing revenue sooner	Reducing outstanding days sales	Controller, CFO	Multi-client invoicing, online review workflow invoice approval.	Reduction of cost	Borrowing cost

The budget forecast is illustrated by following table and pie chart derived from that.

Years	Cost of Investment
2018	$20,000
2020	$50,000
2022	$60,000
2024	$80,000
2026	$100,000
2028	$150,000
2050	$200,000

The sales per quarter are demonstrated hereafter by the following table and “hockey stick” curve.

Sales (Million of $)	Months after release
0	0th
2	4th
5	8th
8	12th
10	16th
12	20th
20	24th
40	28th
80	32nd
150	36th
300	40th

The study has applied proper techniques and tools for identifying scopes to implement digital businesses at Decision Lens. Here a bar chart is used to illustrate investment needs and various offsetting sales for every quarter. Comprehensive use of Task Matrices is done to enable detailed costing that is needed to be done. Since the people of current age are closer to a journey of mastering digital business, the above discussion of disruptive technologies, digital services mastery, approaches of innovation management and platform business models has helped to shed light to the practice of current business leaders. It has also provided a glimpse of what to come in future. 

Project Management

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