Three steps to leveraging digital to accelerate business growth

At Made by Many we do three things to help our clients grow their businesses …

1. Work out what to do and then prototype it

Our goal is always to make an early, informed decision about where to focus effort, by using rapid cycles of research, creative synthesis, modelling and test. We combine business strategy with experience design and product engineering to discover opportunities that offer the best fit across four critical dimensions:

• Customers’ unmet needs
• Competitive set and market environment
• Business assets, constraints and objectives
• Digital product potential (leverage afforded by creative design, technology and business thinking)

This enables the business to identify and focus on opportunities with sustainable growth potential. We set out initial investment criteria and design principles together with baseline and target measures of success; we make strategy tangible through testable models, prototypes and working products which inform both investment case and operational impact analysis; and we define the guiding policy and coherent actions that will deliver success.

2. Make it real

We expect to get working software in people’s hands within 100 days — this builds the momentum that is an essential part of product success.

A lean and agile digital product team develops, tests adapts and scales a minimum viable product. The impact of the MVP on market position, growth, customers, operations and business capabilities is observed and analysed; strategy is revisited and adjusted as required.

Strategy is emergent, not predictive. Evidence drives planning, operational design and investment decisions.

3. Accelerate change

At the earliest responsible point the team transitions product and operations to client teams.

This is change by making: embedding new skills and abilities as part of the product development process. Teams are focused on relevant work with real business impact; the organisation learns how to adapt new structures for design, decision-making and communication as the need arises.

We’ve taken more than 100 products to market using this methodology and set dozens of major corporations, PE-backed companies and NGOs on the path to digital strategies that redefine market position, grow revenue and profitability and build the capabilities that are essential in any software-powered 21st Century business.

Next: Digital investment frameworks: a value-based approach to focusing effort and intent