Our Thinking

At Online Business Systems we have our feet in two different worlds – Digital Transformation and Cybersecurity. As you can guess, we get a lot of questions about how to plan for and incorporate a security strategy when designing and executing a digital transformation project (e.g. process automation, transforming to a paperless organization, incorporating AI, or a cloud migration.) I have read quite a few articles and blogs written on this topic recently and had a few thoughts of my own based on my experiences being on the front lines where we’ve seen security done well (and also, unfortunately, not so well.)

Digital Transformation has become quite the industry buzzword. It’s become a goal for most organizations to achieve, yet more than half of these attempts are unsuccessful. What is it that prevents a successful digital transformation?  If you’re not one of the companies that has already failed or is on the verge of failure; keep reading to ensure you too, don’t become part of that rapidly growing statistic.

Everyday businesses face a unique set of challenges and must consider a changing array of variables and scenarios. These dynamic realities make it very difficult to identify the "best time" for integrating new processes, making it impossible to generalize the problem into a one-size-fits-all type of answer, especially when it comes to Digital Transformation. The variables with DT are even more of a factor given its inherently adaptable and far reaching impact.

In this blog, we will look at two common scenarios that are often experienced and from there, entertain some practical solutions on how you can successfully integrate DT processes as efficiently as possible.

2018 has been a year of rapid technology growth. We have seen changes to the security landscape, an increased adoption of AI and continued generational adjustments to our workforce.  As we look back over the last 12 months, we wanted to share some of our favorite blog posts from 2018 that touch on some or all of these topics: from risk and security assessment, to user experience, design thinking, business consulting, and everything in between. Happy reading!

As Agile coaches, it is not uncommon for us to encounter companies that have made adopting Agile a priority in their organization but have come under scrutiny for not delivering any specific business value - despite what was promised. In many of these cases, we have seen these organizations revert back to their traditional ways of delivering projects, while others take a mix and match approach relegating Agile only to small co-located projects.

Digital Transformation. Just two words. By themselves they are interesting. Put them together and they speak to something much more powerful. Those two words put together, “Digital” + “Transformation” = “Digital Transformation”, are driving change like we haven’t seen in a long time.

Over the course of the last decade business owners and entrepreneurs have found themselves dealing with a set of problems that they have never had to address in the past.

With Christmas trees getting wrapped up for the chippers and the feelings of celebration, togetherness, and giving diminishing to their normal levels— comes that familiar feeling of buyer fatigue. Whether we’re questioning the impact or necessity of the gifts we gave, wondering if we’ve gone overboard or are simply just happy that all the running around is over. A lot of us are just feeling tired at this point in the season. Tired of just buying… stuff.

In today’s world, information is available to anyone with a simple swipe on a smartphone. With this ease of interaction, customers are increasingly rejecting traditional brand touchpoints, such as print media, and focusing their time on personalized interactions that are designed with the customer in mind. A future filled with digital experiences is closer than we think and we need to adapt, or be lost, to this new reality.

What does it mean to have a hit product? Think about the last time you downloaded an app that you felt excited about using. Then actually used it, regularly. An app that you found useful, yes, but also pleasurable. You’re probably going to be hard-pressed to come up with an example outside of Angry Birds, right? Well that’s the goal that we set for ourselves here at Online. We don’t just want to make apps that are useful, we want to build apps for our clients’ that are a hit with their users.