In many ways, how reliant your business is on technology (especially digital technology) is entirely out of your hands. As those types of tools become more prevalent within companies, you are at the mercy of your industry.
However, there is always wiggle room within that dependence, especially in how you stand in contrast to your competitors. It’s important to remember that, as it can allow you to get more creative with where you comply with what is expected from your brand here and how you carve out your own identity.
The Positives of a Purely Digital Business
With modern digital tools being what they are, it’s now possible for your business to exist entirely in the digital landscape. Obviously, this is going to make more sense for certain brands than others, but just knowing that this exists at all as a possibility gives you significant room to maneuver. It also means that there are plenty of other businesses that you can look to in order to learn exactly how they went about it – even if it’s something that often makes more sense for other industries than yours.
Saving Money on the Office
Creating an entirely digital business immediately means that there is no need for a centralized office. If there is an identifiable, short-term advantage to taking this route, it might represent itself financially. While there are changes that would have to be made in regard to your working structure, being able to go without paying for an office (and all the associated utilities) is a potentially massive benefit. The digital infrastructure to support remote working across large distances certainly exists, and that means that a physical space is no longer technically necessary. Of course, many business owners might have a difficult time relinquishing the physical workspace, but from the perspective of employees, it could be something that opens a path to a stronger work/life balance.
That raises an interesting opportunity for you, allowing you to not only use this decision as a way to save money but also as a way to boost the reputation of your brand. Supporting a more flexible work/life balance for your employees could certainly help with that, but it might also allow you to advocate for greener working methods – removing the need for your customers to commute and taking cars off of the road.
Outsourcing Options
Going entirely digital gives you more options to outsource, but it doesn’t have to be a complete outsourcing of all your business functions. Recognizing the benefits of going digital can help you pick and choose the aspects that appeal most to your brand, whether to keep in-house or outsource. For example, exploring outsourcing options might lead you to discover professionals and experts who might be able to offer you a more convenient and effective service. Finding an HR consultant in Grimsby, for instance, can let you work with a team of human resources experts who are able to be the perfect third party to mediate between you and your employees, offering the both of you everything that you need and allowing you to keep your focus on the work of your business. This can be a strategy that you also apply to marketing, security, finance, or IT – ultimately meaning that you can shape the connections that your business makes through outsourcing depending on your own priorities.
A Wider Talent Pool
If your business does completely commit to a digital existence, a distinct advantage available to you will be the incredibly enormous talent pool at your disposal. This is something that some businesses can struggle with anyway due to their own standing compared to larger competitors – why would a prospective employee with all of the right qualifications choose you over a business that might be able to offer them more? However, it’s a problem that can be compounded further when you’re only looking at one particular area.
Being free of that and instead positioning yourself as a brand that allows its employees to work from anywhere at all means that you can hire from anywhere. The only requirement that you technically have of your employees at that point is that they have the right tools for the job, something that can be discerned through an interview or a similar test. This might also allow you to look for freelance workers, which is another consideration entirely, arguably more similar to outsourcing in some ways. However, knowing the full range of options that you have can help you to make the decision that feels the most natural for the kind of structure that you’re trying to make.
Considerations and Potential Pitfalls
All of that being said, if it was a decision that was entirely, inarguably positive, then it would be something that every business was jumping on board with. There will be elements that give some brands more pause than others, depending on what you prioritize in business and what your needs are. As well as the definite, absolute limitations, there is a question of implementation. If you don’t establish your business as entirely digital in the right way, it could be something that comes back to bite you in one way or another. That means that it’s a process you have to consider carefully.
A Different Working Structure
The fact of the matter is that operating in this way means that your business takes on a very different structure. This is something that you can feel in almost every aspect of it. For example, you have to let go of the fact that your team members are under your supervision all the time. This can be something that employees often find quite freeing – the fact that it’s harder to micromanage when working remotely. It can be a difficult step to take for many employers, though, and it means that constantly checking on employees or arranging meetings is something that becomes less feasible. It can be a good opportunity to begin fostering more trust and independence in the workplace, but that is a learning curve in itself.
That’s to say that while it’s something that can come with its own pros and cons, it’s also important to understand just how different the entire rhythm of work will be. Shifting entirely from a physical workspace to a digital one can make these changes incredibly pronounced, meaning that it might make more sense for you to approach it from a more gradual perspective to see what works for you and what doesn’t.
At the Mercy of Technical Issues
One of the most blatant limitations of embracing everything that digital workspaces have to offer is how vulnerable you are to technical issues. Of course, your team might still be able to work independently if your network goes down or something similar occurs, but issues with services that you use (such as One Drive or Google Docs) could lead to a major disruption in your work that you had no hope of anticipating. While, in many ways, the security that these services provide is much more robust than relying on entirely physical backups, knowing that you have such a blatant vulnerability in your working structure could be something that doesn’t sit too well with you.
That might be even more pronounced when it comes to the matter of cybersecurity. With such a reliance on digital tools, you’ll need a thorough and cohesive security system. After all, the possible digital threats to businesses are always evolving, and that means that you have to move around some money in the budget so that this is an area that’s prioritized even more than it was before.
Wrong Industry
Of course, to businesses in some industries, this shift won’t be an option in any capacity. If the work that your team conducts is entirely physical, you might not need a shared workspace like an office anyway, but your team won’t be able to work from home. Furthermore, you might still need physical premises so that you can house the tools that your team needs to use. A more flexible approach can work, but the limitations might be hard to ignore.
The same could arguably be said of some areas like games testing or anything else where you’re dealing with NDAs and confidential information. It might be harder for you to be assured of this security when your entire team is working from home, but this will vary from case to case.
Striking a Balance
It’s a difficult topic to discuss without focusing on the extremes. Painting a picture of what a brand should expect is easier when talking about the most obvious differences between those that aim for a purely digital experience or those that try to embrace as much of a traditional approach as possible. It’s important to emphasize, though, that customization is the key. Picking and choosing the elements that make sense for you can lead you to a working rhythm that is entirely personalized to your brand and that might, in turn, hold a unique appeal to customers and employees.
