The incumbent’s advantage for digital business

The advantage that a traditional business that has been around for sometime has, when building out new digital businesses is the customer base it has been serving over time. The rich customer data and access to a customer base are assets it can leverage in designing innovative digital services.

Copying the success blue prints of the digital natives isn’t what the traditional businesses ought to be doing; rather they should draw upon the traditional strengths that are still relevant in the digital world. Data and insights into customers and customer needs and behavior is the biggest asset of them all !

Every digital strategist of an established business should be asking, “What useful services can we create if we were to tap into our data, what new ecosystems can we pioneer, what new markets, customers, partners will find us interesting because of the data we have”.