Now these days, when I surf on technology company websites or in the technology events, I find word ‘Digital’ with so much prominence. Is it something new in the space of IT? I believe that it is just a new way to repackaging the services or solution. Here I have not used the word same services or solutions because IT is continuously evolving stream. So I can safely say that even 30 years back we were doing things digitally as it was the starting point of actual IT revolution.
So what are we doing differently now? I would say that ‘Nothing’. We are coining this term based on only two concepts – Repackaging (that we learned in Marketing School or I would say everybody knows it) and Utilitarianism.
I will discuss here first concept – Repackaging.
It’s very simple concept that says – “Selling old wine in new bottle”. But here we are talking about IT service/solution offerings and there is no bottle or package. You are right. I have used marketing word (Repackaging) so that I can explain my point.
But we will deep dive and understand this marketing gimmick with different stream of knowledge. This would better to be explained it by the concept of Utilitarianism.
Utilitarianism is philosophical theory that propounds – ‘Maximize the utility (gain) and minimize the pain (investment)’. Jeremy Bentham, described utility as the sum of all pleasure that results from an action, minus the suffering of anyone involved in the action.
Marketers use this philosophy to induce action of CXOs. They promote ‘Digital’ as new wave in IT and enterprises should adopt it within no time. This induced act of utilitarianism, requires us to choose our actions by calculating which action will maximize utility. As a human being, our mind is programed to maximize the gain. Whenever we see someone is selling such a proposition we give it a try. Sometimes we end-up with right IT vendor who actually provides you the value that was demonstrated. Otherwise, it is proved a simple “Marketing Gimmick”.
If you really want to be in that category of gainer, we should accurately define the rules that would actually help us to attain the benefits of real digital change. This change objectives should be dictating our choices of actions rather than fancy jargons. This calculation of utilitarianism is very important as consequences of new technology adoption, are inherently unknowable. This entire exercise can be done on the basis of quantitative analysis.
Digital is unstoppable phenomena and it will keep growing in every sphere of our life. So don’t trap yourself and be rational.
RajeevMisra.Com 