Ensuring the digital readiness of your organization is crucial in today's world. Digital readiness involves more than just adopting the latest technologies; it's about positioning your business to leverage these tools effectively to drive growth and improve your bottom line. This article explores the importance of digital readiness and provides practical steps for business owners to enhance their digital capabilities.
Listen to Stimulus Tech Talk: Empowering Your Business Growth: Harnessing Technology for Digital Readiness
"Digital readiness means being ready for anything. As technology moves fast, within days or months, your competitors could be implementing new technologies that make them better than you. To stay competitive, you must be ready to adopt these advancements quickly." - Nathan Whittacre
The Importance of Digital Readiness
Digital readiness refers to how well a business can adapt to and implement new technologies. In a world where technological advancements occur rapidly, businesses must stay ahead of the curve to remain competitive. Companies that fail to keep up with these changes risk being left behind as their competitors gain an edge through more efficient and innovative practices.
Understanding the Technology Acceptance Curve
Nathan Whittacre, CEO of Stimulus Technologies, explains that the acceptance curve of technology has significantly shortened. Previously, it might have taken years for new technologies to become widespread. Today, the timeline is drastically reduced to months or even weeks. Early adopters of technology often reap the most significant benefits, while laggards risk falling behind. Businesses need to assess their readiness to adopt and implement new technologies swiftly.
Building a Culture of Technology Innovation
Creating a Forward-Thinking Culture
Developing a culture of technology innovation is the first step toward digital readiness. As a business leader, setting a vision that embraces technological advancement is crucial. Encourage your team to stay informed about emerging technologies and create an environment that fosters innovation. This mindset shift is vital for staying competitive in today's digital landscape.
Assessing Your Digital Infrastructure
Evaluating Your Current Systems
To achieve digital readiness, businesses must assess their existing infrastructure. This includes evaluating hardware, software, and network capabilities. Ensuring that your infrastructure can support new technologies is essential for seamless integration. Companies like Stimulus Technologies can help assess and upgrade your systems to meet the demands of modern technological advancements.
Enhancing Digital Skills Among Employees
Investing in Training and Development
One of the critical components of digital readiness is having a workforce skilled in new technologies. Invest in training programs to upskill your employees and keep them updated with the latest tools and techniques. This not only improves productivity but also ensures that your team can effectively implement and utilize new technologies.
Effective Data Management
Leveraging Data for AI Integration
Data management plays a significant role in digital readiness. Collecting, organizing, and analyzing data is crucial for leveraging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI). AI tools require large datasets to function effectively. Ensuring that your data is well-managed and accessible can help you harness the full potential of AI to improve various aspects of your business, from customer service to sales and marketing.
Ensuring Robust Cybersecurity
Protecting Against Modern Threats
With the rise of new technologies, cybersecurity becomes increasingly important. Businesses must regularly assess their security measures to protect against evolving threats. Implementing robust cybersecurity protocols ensures that your data and systems are secure, safeguarding your business from potential cyber-attacks.
Be Digitally Ready For The Future
Digital readiness is not just about adopting new technologies; it's about creating a culture of innovation, investing in infrastructure and training, managing data effectively, and ensuring robust cybersecurity. By focusing on these areas, businesses can position themselves to leverage technological advancements, stay competitive, and drive growth. As Nathan emphasizes, staying ahead in today's fast-paced technological landscape requires proactive and strategic efforts to enhance your digital readiness.
Nathan published his book, The CEO's Digital Survival Guide to help business owners navigate the digital landscape for their business. Download your free digital copy today.
Empowering Your Business Growth: Harnessing Technology for Digital Readiness transcript
Intro 00:00
You're listening to Stimulus Tech Talk. A conversation based podcast created by Stimulus Technologies that covers a range of topics related to business and technology.
Sherry Lipp 00:16
Welcome to a Stimulus Tech Talk, I am Sherry Lipp and marketing manager at Stimulus Technologies. And I am joined by Nathan Whittacre CEO at Stimulus Technologies. And today, we're going to be talking about how you can get your business digitally ready, digital readiness. Hi, Nathan.
Nathan Whittacre 00:36
Hi, Sherry. And hello, everybody, thanks for joining.
Sherry Lipp 00:40
So when we're talking about digital readiness in the business, what what to business owners need to know about that topic, that subject?
Nathan Whittacre 00:48
I think a big deal for businesses today is certainly how well positioned they are to utilize new technologies inside their business. And, you know, there's, we often talk about, like this acceptance curve of technology, you know, whether it's individually or as business owners. So, you know, there's obviously, very early adopters, you know, people that are bleeding edge, they're doing things inside their businesses, or whatever it may be before anybody else, and then, you know, they're you, and those are very few, and then you have these, you know, this curve of, you know, as, as the new technology gets progressively better, more and more acceptance, and you have, like, you know, early acceptors, and then, you know, the general population accepting it, and then you have the laggards, that only after 90% of the people are using that technology, will they implement it. And I think, you know, because of technology is moving so fast today, the timeline on that that bell curve is, is really getting shrunk down, you know, might have been, you know, 50 years ago, it might have been years before technology became ubiquitous among businesses. Now, today, you know, digital readiness might mean that within days or months, you know, your competitors are implementing technologies that are making them better than you. And unless you're implementing those quickly, also, you may be left behind in the marketplace. So when we talked about digital readiness, as basically you as the owner and your company, are you ready to implement new technologies and new strategies inside your business to improve your company, and, and in the end, improve your bottom line, you know, you have to whatever you implement inside your company, it has to drive new revenue and profitability inside your company. So just means being ready for anything, you know, as we're just Sherry and I were just talking before we started the podcast about AI and, and you know, what its meaning to the business today, and how, you know, we, as a company are trying to implement and integrate it. You know, there's a lot of companies out there that aren't even looking at it, but it's the biggest change right now. And it's moving so fast. And so the question is, is you as a company, are you ready to implement these strategies? Are you going to wait for somebody else to implement it, and then start taking your customers because they have this new technology that's making their business more productive and profitable.
Sherry Lipp 03:32
And so that you've talked about this before? You know, there's different types of business owners if somebody is, you know, some people are all about new technology, and some people are kind of resistant, especially if you hear the words AI. In fact, I went to a conference last night that Magic Johnson was speaking at, and he was talking about his businesses. And he's like, I hate all that stuff. But I have people on my team who do it. And so how do you recommend somebody start taking an assessment if they're not so digitally inclined?
Nathan Whittacre 04:02
I think you just made the right point is, you know, depending on where you're at, as a business owner and your comfort, for adopting new technologies, you need to have people on your team that are on a scale of adoption. So it's really being digital readiness, it being digitally ready or the digital readiness that we're talking about is your overarching organization. So if you're not if you're a laggard, if you're you gotta wait for everybody to get it and you're still running a flip phone today. You know, you need to make sure that you have people on your team that are identifying these new technologies and working towards implementing those so but you as a business owner need to set the tone is saying okay, we as a company, are going to be either some type of early adopter, or you know, early mass adopter, So that we're getting ahead of these technologies before our competitors do. And so you as the leader of the organization, set that tone. And then also make sure that your team has the skills and the abilities. And, you know, the desire to implement those technologies, you might not have to you might be the one being shown how to do it. But you have to be ready and have the culture inside your organization to want to deploy those, you mentioned, you know, Magic Johnson, you know, it's obviously he's, he's older. You know, been around for a long time. And we often think that, you know, an older generation will struggle with some of these new technologies. But on the opposite side of it, I had a speaker to my CEO group that came in this week, he's 82 years old, still speaking, which is amazing, lots of energy. And he's talking about sales and marketing and how to implement better sales and marketing tools. And more than half his presentation was about AI tools. And you know, him in his 80s knew these tools, well was talking about him and his companies, how they're implementing them and using them. So it's not about age, it's really about your desire and culture to implement these things. So you know, whether you're doing it yourself or having team members do it, you know, businesses need to be ready for these major changes, the major shifts, and at AI is the big one that's happening right now. And organizations need to look at automation and generative AI and how to improve their companies through that. Because it's it's so important to do today.
Sherry Lipp 06:48
Yeah, and definitely, we have a couple of podcasts with people, because I just ran into somebody, and they're just like, I hate AI. But I think they're just thinking of it as generating fake stuff. Whereas it's like, instead of as a business tool, and so what kind of things do you think people could do to educate themselves about that, obviously, we have some podcasts, we have several podcasts about that now.
Nathan Whittacre 07:13
So there's a lot of different things, you know, one, I, I always recommend people to try it out, you know, there are tools out there that incorporate AI, that are standard business tools that are very interesting. Like, for example, the sales market person introduced me to one that I hadn't heard of before, called Crystal Knows. And it's a it's a prospecting tool, that when you log into LinkedIn, it analyzes the LinkedIn profile of the person and gives you an idea of the personality profile of that individual. So when you're selling to that individual, you know what type of personality they are, so that you can make your communication and marketing align with how that person is going to receive it. You know, if you go to any sales and marketing training for the last 50 years, that's the stuff that they teach you. But you know, we have, they were teaching you how to recognize that the way that people communicate the way people you know, write their emails or talk on the phone, the salesperson would have had to analyze that and you know, come up with a conclusion, so they know how to sell with it. Now, there's tools out there that will do a quick analysis, whether it's an email or LinkedIn profile, and say, This person is a driver, or this person is an investigator, you know, whatever it may be, and that now you can develop the right communication style with them, send the right emails, make the right marketing for them to make better buying decisions. And, you know, these are, again, it's just stuff that we've been doing in business for many years, we're just automating the process with AI. Certainly, the deep fake stuff that you just mentioned, is scary. And I think that's what people worry about is like, Oh, my goodness, it's going to, you know, take an image of me and I'm going to say a bunch of stuff that I would never say on the internet and generate videos that I would have never produced and, and how do I trust anything anymore? Yeah, certainly people are going to take advantage of this technology to do harm. We've had podcasts on how hackers are using it now. But you got to I mean, I think it's companies today, we have to evolve and change outs, we are going to be left behind, you know, if a salesperson that isn't using that tool is up against the salesperson that using that tool, you know, like that, for example. You know, they're going to be more productive and more effective as a salesperson that's really what it is. It's just increasing the effectiveness of our individual team members, and giving them the tools to be you know, as productive in the environment as possible.
Sherry Lipp 10:00
And then what? What other key components of digital readiness should people be thinking about if they're doing a digital readiness assessment of their own business?
Nathan Whittacre 10:10
So I think that there's five areas in, in digital readiness. And the first area is what I talked about is developing a culture of technology innovation is making sure that your organization understands that technology is going to drive the company forward. In this age, you know, you can't just, you know, plug your ears and ignore all that's going around and on in the world today. So that's the first one. And as leaders, that's our goal, you know, as a CEO of an organization, we set the vision, we have to say to the organization, we're going to be an adopter of the technology, we're going to do our best to incorporate those. So key number one, you as a leader, create the culture, then you have to understand what your current infrastructure is, you know, do an assessment of your hardware, your software, your network, all the things that are inside your organization to make sure that you're keeping up with this latest generation of tools that are becoming available, do you have the infrastructure to even implement these things, and that's where stimulus can help you out is understanding, you know, if you are ready to implement things like aI on your network, and incorporating these these tools into your system, then we've already talked a lot about digital skills, make sure that your workforce and your employees understand what's available. All of these are new, nobody really knows how to use these tools, because they just came out in the last six months. So you're not going to hire, maybe you can, maybe you can hire an employee that's already skilled, but it's, it's, they're probably not experts on it. And so it's sending your team out for the right training to develop those skills to be able to implement it, there's a lot of data that you're going to collect. So data management is a big part of it. And when we had our AI expert on a couple of months ago, on the podcast, we talked a lot about data scientists, and the collection of data is a big part of AI. So for AI to work, generative AI, we're talking about things like chat GPT, and some of these tools, they need a large amount of data to be useful inside your organization. So organizing that data, feeding it into the AI system. So you know, if you want a chat bot on your website to answer inquiries from, you know, customers, they need to know how you've interacted in the past with, with customers. And so getting that data, you know, fed into the AI system, so they can be programmed to respond how you want them to, that's number four. And then the fifth one is the scary part is the cybersecurity and ensuring that your systems are compliant and secure against attacks by AI. So, you know, we've, again, we talk about this a lot on the podcast is making sure that you're you're often doing assessments and understanding where your holes are in your security and protect against those because the threats to your company are greater and greater each day as the hackers are using AI to get into your system. So those are the five key areas of the culture, the infrastructure, the skills of your employees, the data that's involved, and then of course, the security at the end.
Sherry Lipp 13:41
And from your personal experience, how do you align your the digital side the digital readiness with your other business goals?
Nathan Whittacre 13:51
I, you know, we I don't know whether it was a webinar or podcasts we did a couple of months ago that as a company, we use the Entrepreneurial Operating System or EOS. And we quarterly set out goals as a company that we're working on. And sometimes all this feels really overwhelming. Like, when do I do this? When do I start implementing things, and there's so many things available. Like I mentioned, I just learned about a new tool. And it can be a little bit whiplash to your team. If you're constantly saying, Hey, I learned about this new tool yesterday from so and so let's do it. And they're like, Well, you just talked about five other tools you want to do and do you want us to do this one or these other ones first. And so it's really developing a good roadmap as an organization of how you're going to implement these and not overwhelm your team too much. So as a leadership team, or if the leader is just, you know, look at what's available out there and say, you know, this quarter we're going to implement this new tool and make sure that we have, you know, all the training that's available Make sure that it's you know, becomes sticky inside the organization, or, you know, and it's fully implemented and adopted as across an organization. And it might be one quarter, it might be multiple quarters to get each one of these new tools implemented, depending on the scope that's involved. But the last thing you want to do as a leader, is be like, I think the dog's name was Doug, on the movie Up, I don't know, if you guys have seen it, it's one of my kids favorite movies. You know, this dog could talk and he was talking to, you know, the Boy Scout and the old man in the movie, and, and he was explaining things really well. And then he would, is a squirrel that he would look away and run off, you know, and you just don't want to be this squirrel, or the squirrel chaser. So certainly having a plan in place and developing, you know, the timeline on when these things are happening and ensure that, that you're not putting new things over the top of initiatives that are really important to your organization too.
Sherry Lipp 16:04
Yeah, I would think developing a plan with, you know, kind of your end goal in mind would help you figure out which, which of these strategies you should implement first or an order for them?
Nathan Whittacre 16:19
For sure.
Sherry Lipp 16:21
And so, you know, for somebody getting started, like if they don't even know where to begin with what to put on their digital assessment? How do you think they should? How do you think they should go about starting to do this?
Nathan Whittacre 16:37
Certainly use some tools. If you're, it's a free account to set up with chat GPT, you certainly can ask chat GPT, or one of the other general AI tools and say, Hey, I'm a CPA firm. And I'd like to implement some AI technologies in my firm, what, what should I do, you know, just just have it generate some ideas. You know, it used to be the you Googled this. And you know, Google is obviously, with their search engine, is incorporating some AI technologies in there. But you know, there's people, you know, that are marketing to you. And a lot of the things that you get when you do these searches, will be marketing materials, too. So, you know, using something like a generative AI to do some reach research for you is a good way to do it. But I think, you know, pick one area of your business that you would really like to focus on. So I just mentioned sales and marketing, maybe incorporate you want to incorporate some AI technologies in your sales process. So do some research and say, you know, what, you know, how do I incorporate AI into the sales process, and then go out to the marketplace, or have one of your team members go out to the market and see what tools that are available today out there that you can incorporate in the sales process, it might be like I mentioned the Chrystal Knows, or it might be another tool that will help your sales team be more effective. And once you've, you know, aligned the tool with your goal, then you can create the scope and the implementation. But I think what happens is, a lot of times, you know, you you find a tool, and then you find a problem for that tool to fix, right. And I think it needs to be the other way around and say, Okay, I'm having this problem today. You know, we're having an ineffective sales process, we're not closing as much as we used to, what can I implement today to fix this problem, so identify the issue first, and then find a solution for it. And, and hopefully, there's some type of AI to help you with that. And then, you know, use a guide to help you with this process, because it is overwhelming. You know, you can talk to us it Stimulus, you know, to talk about some tools out there, think about the problems that you're having, you know, it's a good opportunity, when we do a technology business review with you as an organization, you know, talk to your technical account manager about, you know, problems that you're having, and then we can help guide the process on implementing some new tools or new technologies inside your organization to solve those business problems that you're having. So I always think it should start with a, you know, a pain point or a business problem you're having come up with, you know, what the results you would like it to be and then find the tools or technology to solve those for you.
Sherry Lipp 19:34
Yeah, and definitely, it was, it was a webinar, I think, for the EOS system. And we do have a lot of those resources available for people on all these technologies. So definitely look for those or reach out to us and ask, we'll be happy to help with that kind of thing. Any final thoughts on this on this topic?
Nathan Whittacre 19:53
It's, it's a new generation. You know, there's just so many interesting things that are out there for business owners. to use to make their businesses better and, and kind of going back to what we talked about in the beginning is, you know, that bell curve. Wherever you're at as an organization, as far as the standard goes, you as a leader sets where you want your organization to be, do you want to be the bleeding edge adopter? Do you want to be one of the mass adopters? Or do you want to be one of the laggards. And I would say, if you're, you know, if you want to wait to see what everybody else does first, and the problems that they have, and then you'll think about implementing it, you're going to be left behind. And it doesn't, I think today, it doesn't take very long. I mean, it could take, you know, six months or 12 months where it might might have taken years before for your competitors to really be beyond where you're at. So there is there are tools, there's things out there in all areas of your business, whether it's you know, customer service, sales and marketing, you know, service deployment, technical work, you know, there's, there's so many tools out there that are honestly pretty inexpensive, and they're subscription models for the most part to you know, to try out and, you know, I think think about you know, where you're having problems inside your organization in all different areas, and then find a solution for it and, and, you know, make sure that you're ready to really implement these technologies as far as your organization goes.
21:27
All right, well, thank
Sherry Lipp 21:29
you so much valuable information as always, Nathan,
Nathan Whittacre 21:33
Thanks Sherry and thanks, everybody for being here today.
