Marcos Bueno

Marcos Bueno, Vox Media, Inc., Head of Vox Studios

How You Know It's Time to Digitally Transform Your Business

With all the talk about digital transformation, how do you know your business is ready for change? Today’s reality is that if you’re waiting for the right time, you’re already falling behind. Technology is changing the world. You need to embrace changes that can strengthen your business, because your competition is already doing so. For many businesses, the big question is not if or when, but where, to start.

“You don’t want to be growth-limited by an inefficient process.”

One indicator that you can benefit from a digitally automated process is the level of duplication in the workflow. This is especially true when you have multiple actions or processes facilitating the same goal. A poorly managed process can have implications across multiple business units in the organization.

A good example is in the production world for TV-film and digital editorial content. Gathering releases for talent, location, artwork or assets that are used in the final content, whether it’s the soundtrack or a photo or whatever it might be, is typically a paper process that is labor-intensive and can be error-prone, it is also difficult to scale.

We’ve grown from a couple of networks to eight. Each network has its own digital editorial team and production team. You don’t want to be growth-limited by an inefficient process.

Early on I adopted a standard of not tolerating more than 20% duplicate work in a process. That rule gave us enough to be a little scrappy about testing out ideas for streamlining processes. We used using simple tools that we had before investing in a big transformation. Every business will have a different measure for what contributes to that 20%.

This is an excerpt from The Essential Guide To Understanding Digital Transformation. The eBook was generously sponsored by Iron Mountain.

Iron Mountain: The Essential Guide To Understanding Digital Transformation