By using this site, you agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Accept
IndebtaIndebta
  • Home
  • News
  • Banking
  • Credit Cards
  • Loans
  • Mortgage
  • Investing
  • Markets
    • Stocks
    • Commodities
    • Crypto
    • Forex
  • Videos
  • More
    • Finance
    • Dept Management
    • Small Business
8
Notification Show More
Videos
President Trump delivers remarks on AI
11 hours ago
Videos
Why high earners still feel broke
12 hours ago
News
FFLC: Measured Exposure For Growth With Valuation Discipline (BATS:FFLC)
12 hours ago
Videos
Alphabet earnings beat expectations, Tesla misses on earnings and revenue
1 day ago
Videos
Why Texas Instruments Is Betting $60 Billion On Making Cheap Chips In The U.S.
1 day ago
Videos
Tesla Q2 earnings fall short of what Wall Street was hoping for
2 days ago
Videos
Why Americans love gated communities
2 days ago
News
Allspring Special Small Cap Value Fund Q2 2025 Commentary (ESPAX)
3 days ago
Aa
IndebtaIndebta
Aa
  • Banking
  • Credit Cards
  • Loans
  • Dept Management
  • Mortgage
  • Markets
  • Investing
  • Small Business
  • Videos
  • Home
  • News
  • Banking
  • Credit Cards
  • Loans
  • Mortgage
  • Investing
  • Markets
    • Stocks
    • Commodities
    • Crypto
    • Forex
  • Videos
  • More
    • Finance
    • Dept Management
    • Small Business
Follow US
Indebta > Small Business > Five Lessons From The Virtual Production Line
Small Business

Five Lessons From The Virtual Production Line

News Room
Last updated: 2023/05/18 at 5:33 PM
By News Room
Share
8 Min Read
SHARE

Yann Gautier EMEA President of Appnovation.

Contents
Digital FactoriesFive Lessons From The Virtual Production LineFinal Thoughts

Most major companies and brands recognize that their long-term survival hinges on how effectively they commit to digital transformation.

Faced with widespread disruption to consumer behavior and expectations, failure to integrate tech-driven capabilities has become an open invitation for more agile rivals and innovative startups to consign slow-moving organizations to the scrap heap.

Yet companies often need help to move the digital transformation needle from idea to implementation. High costs, cultural resistance, uncertain results and operational complexity are all potential barriers to change. Digital transformation is, therefore, often diluted, delayed or sporadically deployed.

Digital Factories

These challenges explain why I’ve seen digital factories suddenly become such a hot topic in boardrooms. While the concept itself is familiar, the model seems ideally suited to the rapidly-evolving business environment where companies now operate. This is especially true for sectors like fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), where the pace of change post-Covid has become relentless.

Put simply, a digital factory is a kind of tech-powered hothouse and organizational model where digital experts from inside and outside the organization can probe the core assumptions that drive the overarching business.

The Ability To Test Ideas

Instead of being subjected to the same constraints as employees on the legacy side of the business, workers on the digital factory floor get to test original ideas and play with new tech. Through a series of agile sprints, the digital factory builds products or services that can be tested as a minimum viable product (MVP).

The beauty of the digital factory is that it forges the necessary transformation building blocks without becoming embroiled in an endless series of conflicts with the legacy business.

Continuous Delivery

Digital factories have proved especially effective in enabling continuous delivery—a key determinant in driving successful digital-era businesses. Continuous delivery improves quality, reduces technical debt and enhances speed to market and knowledge retention across the organization. Put all of the above together, and digital factories help companies to pivot, adapt and be more agile.

Developing Solutions

There is no real limit to the tasks a digital factory can undertake: A proof of concept for a new app or web feature, a new customer journey or a full website or app revamp are all within the factory’s capabilities. By adopting an agile mindset, factories can embark on anything from a two-week to a 12-month project while committing to releasing outputs at a regular tempo. The ultimate goal is to devise solutions that people can integrate at scale into the legacy business.

Five Lessons From The Virtual Production Line

The theory is easy to grasp, but how does it work in practice? Below are five key considerations for firms wanting to embrace a digital factory setup.

1. Deploy diverse skill sets.

Companies need to select a broad team of experts and actively embrace those that bring unorthodox skills from outside the organization. Typically, digital factories are built around a core team that has a clear grasp of the challenges facing the organization.

Feeding into this core team should be a mix of subject matter experts who bring specialist skills in experience, tech, delivery and data. These satellite teams help define and shape outcomes and deliverables through a collaborative relationship with the core team.

At a certain juncture, you should build a production team around the core team that is responsible for delivering future-facing products or services for the organization.

2. Embrace guided autonomy.

Digital factories need the freedom to fail, to experiment and to iterate without overbearing KPIs. But there also need to be guardrails.

At the outset, companies need to be clear about their objectives in setting up a digital factory. If the team on the frontline has no direction of travel, they are likely to end up in a commercial wilderness. So, it’s important that someone has arm’s length oversight of the process—the board’s representative, for example. A digital factory won’t be successful without buy-in from the most senior stakeholders and leaders, so there needs to be a balance between workforce autonomy and factory ownership.

3. Digital factories should own the product lifecycle.

A digital factory is more than just an innovation hub. While ideation is the first stage in the digital factory’s scope, the next stage concerns governance and delivery—namely, how to turn an idea into a product or service. The third stage sees the factory’s production team transform ideas into value.

If it is working well, this process happens in a rapid and friction-free way. By embracing an iterative culture, organizations can pivot quickly.

4. Digital factories must always be on.

Once a company is committed to a digital factory, it’s important to keep a core operation running at all times. But that doesn’t mean it needs to always be the same size or composition.

A digital factory’s superpower is that it can expand or contract based on demand. Some people might work there every day, while others attend on a more sporadic basis. Different cadences and alternative perspectives can benefit what is fundamentally a flexible development tool.

5. Digital factories need to be bespoke.

Digital factories inevitably vary company by company. Every board must set up its factory according to its own specificities that encompass its organization, culture, scale, specialism or digital maturity.

In the case of multinationals, they may choose to run parallel digital factory frameworks market by market with some kind of connective tissue running between them. The one non-negotiable is bringing in alternative perspectives from the outside.

Final Thoughts

Some CEOs will know in their gut that they need a digital factory to help with transformation, but others might ask how they will know if it is necessary.

I think large organizations with multiple stakeholders should certainly be looking seriously at the benefits a digital factory can bring.

You want to do anything to avoid that critical delay—the months or years it can take to turn an idea into a product or service—where agile competitors (or ankle biters) can act, stealing market share away from you.

Forbes Business Council is the foremost growth and networking organization for business owners and leaders. Do I qualify?

Read the full article here

News Room May 18, 2023 May 18, 2023
Share this Article
Facebook Twitter Copy Link Print
Leave a comment Leave a comment

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Finance Weekly Newsletter

Join now for the latest news, tips, and analysis about personal finance, credit cards, dept management, and many more from our experts.
Join Now
President Trump delivers remarks on AI

Watch full video on YouTube

Why high earners still feel broke

Watch full video on YouTube

FFLC: Measured Exposure For Growth With Valuation Discipline (BATS:FFLC)

This article was written byFollowI am an individual investor. My main focus…

Alphabet earnings beat expectations, Tesla misses on earnings and revenue

Watch full video on YouTube

Why Texas Instruments Is Betting $60 Billion On Making Cheap Chips In The U.S.

Watch full video on YouTube

- Advertisement -
Ad imageAd image

You Might Also Like

Small Business

Brilliant Or Lucky? 4 Key Insights For Ventures & Angels

By News Room
Small Business

A Conversation With Agile Expert Harry Narang

By News Room
Small Business

College enrollment is down, Gen Z losing faith in a degree. Here is a better option.

By News Room
Small Business

The Digital Cyrano De Bergerac Of Modern Business

By News Room
Small Business

Why Do We Stay In A Job When We Are Not Happy? Insights To Help You Get The Career You Deserve

By News Room
Small Business

Making A Large Language Model Transparent, Compliant And Reliable

By News Room
Small Business

The Important Initiative For Real Digital Marketing Results

By News Room
Small Business

The Future Of Real Estate

By News Room
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Youtube Instagram
Company
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Press Release
  • Contact
  • Advertisement
More Info
  • Newsletter
  • Market Data
  • Credit Cards
  • Videos

Sign Up For Free

Subscribe to our newsletter and don't miss out on our programs, webinars and trainings.

I have read and agree to the terms & conditions
Join Community

2023 © Indepta.com. All Rights Reserved.

Welcome Back!

Sign in to your account

Lost your password?