Designing for growth
18th December 2019
Designing for growth
18th December 2019
- 2 minute read
We craft products that enable businesses to achieve their goals. The key to creating products that service the need, yet remain flexible enough to grow with the business, is in understanding the business we are designing for.
Every business is set up and operates in its own way, often utilising a mix of technologies to manage the day to day processes. It is not uncommon for small companies to have a dozen or more subscriptions to various services all handling a different aspect of the business. While this can work well for a while, the pain often comes when the company grows and the processes need to adapt to the growth. If the various subscription options don’t have the flexibility your business needs because they are busy serving a wider audience, this can lead to problems with the day to day running of the business, or worse, a drop in productivity. This presents an interesting fork in the road for many growing businesses.
Turn left and your subscription costs will start to rise as your staff grows, or your number of interactions with the service increases. Business often start thinking longer term at this point, and shopping around for different solutions is common.
So that back to that fork in the road, what of turning right, where does that road lead? The answer is bespoke digital products, or more simply a custom designed product that is tailored to a business. Rather like a tailored suit, it’s made to measure for the needs of a business. Often a bespoke digital product will consolidate several of the existing subscription services, drastically reducing points of focus for the business. This leads to greater efficiencies in the day to day running of a business. A greater proportion of the data the business generates becomes centralised, which means it can be analysed with greater speed and accuracy.
Sounds expensive is a common first reaction. Compared to a month of a subscription, yeah, for sure. Compared to 2 years or 5 years of a dozen subscriptions, nah. Imagine the business having a centralised product that does exactly what it needs it to do and the flexibility to grow with the business. The cherry on top is not having to suck your teeth every time a third party provider adds another five bucks to that monthly subscription, because you now have controllable ongoing costs, and more importantly, full control over the development of features that benefit your business most.