Posted on February 14, 2025 by Rob Carek, Vice President, Client Solutions
Non-gaming accounts for nearly 17% of total casino revenue, according to the American Gaming Association, but in some cases, it can contribute as much as 70%. That’s a substantial differential, and it demonstrates just how large the opportunity is for casino operators to drive revenue growth through non-gaming channels. In fact, the 2024 LaneTerralever (LT) Non-Gaming Player Insights Report indicates that across all age and income demographics, non-gaming activities and amenities like restaurants, bars, spas, bowling alleys, arcades, and live entertainment, are an important consideration in determining which casino to go to.
For years, casino operators have known that personalized experiences build loyal customers and that player’s clubs and loyalty programs provide valuable data on gaming habits. But they miss a crucial piece of the puzzle—non-gaming spending. As these experiences become increasingly meaningful to guests, how can casinos gain a complete view of customer behavior and drive revenue growth across their entire property?
GenAI is here to help.
By leveraging your existing loyalty program and other data, along with GenAI, you can gain deep insights into non-gaming guest behavior, enabling highly personalized recommendations and incentives that encourage exploration of all the amenities on site.
And Kopius has a Virtual Concierge solution to make it happen.
The Who, What, Where, and Why of Non-Gaming Casino Revenue
While gaming remains important to consumers across all demographics, individual preferences, behaviors, and importantly, the opportunities for casino operators vary widely based on generation and income. The LT report indicates that:
All demographics are increasingly going to casinos in groups, and 70% of them say that non-gaming activities are more important when they are with a group.
79% of affluent consumers consider non-gaming offerings in choosing a casino and are more likely to spend 50% of their time engaged in non-gaming activities, and are particularly interested in live events.
86% of Gen Z consumers visit local casinos in groups. When visiting a destination casino, non-gaming amenities like restaurants and live entertainment are top priorities, but at 14%, they allocate the least amount of total spending to non-gaming relative to other generations.
Non-gaming activities are more important to millennials than to any other generation, with 89% of them saying they have a significant impact on which one they choose and 69% saying they budget specifically for non-gaming.
Only 34% of Gen X consumers say that non-gaming activities impact their loyalty to a casino, but like their boomer and Gen Z counterpart, food matters. Gen X prioritizes non-gaming spending in restaurants.
41% of boomers factor in non-gaming activities when choosing a casino, and they allocate 18% of their spending to them. For boomers, restaurants and bars are the most important non-gaming activity.
Insights like these are incredibly powerful when developing non-gaming offerings for specific demographics. But imagine if you could target offerings even more closely, based on individual casino guest preferences and behaviors. And imagine that based on choices guests made during previous visits to your casino, you could anticipate the types of non-gaming activities they might enjoy during future ones. How would that impact the guest experience? And what would that do for your business in terms of loyalty and increased revenue.
GenAI can close that gap, and it isn’t just a promise of what’s to come—the technology is available today.
The Kopius Virtual Concierge —Personalized Recommendations that Drive Non-Gaming Revenue
The Kopius Virtual Concierge for casinos is a flexible, GenAI-powered app that delivers personalized recommendations, incentives, and service to your guests. It connects to your existing data sources like players clubs, loyalty programs, reservation systems, and builds on that data as guests use non-gaming services. With the Kopius Virtual Concierge, you get a comprehensive view of guest behavior across your entire property, not just on the gaming floor, so you can optimizing your non-gaming offerings for maximum impact.
With the Kopius Virtual Concierge, you will:
Boost dining revenue: Offer targeted deals and recommendations based on guest history and preferences, driving traffic to your restaurants and increasing spend.
Upsell related services: Proactively suggest relevant offerings based on guest bookings and activities—like a golf lesson after a tee time—increasing revenue per guest.
Craft tailored itineraries: Create personalized plans based on past visits, encouraging longer stays and maximizing guest engagement and spending.
Optimize offers with data: Leverage real-time data and guest feedback to refine promotions and personalize experiences, driving non-gaming revenue growth.
The possibilities are endless.
Imagine a casino experience perfectly tailored to each guest. That’s the power of the Kopius Virtual Concierge. The more guests engage with it, the more personalized their experience becomes. Meanwhile, casino operators gain access to invaluable data on guest preferences, creating a continuous feedback loop for optimizing offers and experiences.
Elevate Guest Experiences and Drive Non-Gaming Revenue with the Kopius Virtual Concierge
At Kopius, we harness the power of people, data and emerging technologies to build innovative solutions that help our customers navigate continual change and solve formidable challenges.
JumpStart Your Technology Project—and Stay on Track—with Kopius!
At Kopius, we harness the power of people, data and emerging technologies to build innovative solutions that help our customers navigate continual change and solve formidable challenges. To accelerate our customers’ success, we’ve designed a JumpStart program to prioritize digital transformation together.
Posted on January 30, 2025 by Danny Vally, Chief Operating Officer, Kopius
Female freelance developer coding and programming. Coding on two with screens with code language and application.
According to Deloitte’s 2024 Mapping Digital Transformation Value report, there is a sea change in how companies are investing their innovation budgets. Fewer dollars are being invested in transformational change. Instead, “Budgets are going toward more concrete business cases: entering new markets, launching new products, and modernizing the core.”
And a primary driver for this change is value.
The survey indicates increased investments technologies respondents perceived as driving the most value—GenAI, traditional AI, and data architecture are chief among them.
Overcoming Innovation Ambiguity and Identifying Value
Innovation is inherently ambiguous. It is in complete opposition to a concrete business case. You may have a concrete problem but be unclear about whether or how an emerging technology can solve it. Or maybe you know you need to start experimenting with new technology, but you haven’t defined what it can do for your organization. Both those scenarios are a long way from a business case and even further from demonstrating value.
So how do you bridge the gap?
While it may seem counterintuitive, putting some structure around the innovation process can be advantageous, particularly when it comes to narrowing in on a business case and demonstrating value. It can provide you with space to think things through, home in on a problem, and explore solutions from several different angles. It can unearth the unknowns and root out costly gotchas that might prevent you from moving forward. A structured innovation process provides an opportunity to figure out if something.
Innovation often ends with proof of concept that demonstrates that something can be done. That may solve the business-case challenge, but it’s not enough show value. Proof of value is a more modern approach. Proof of value is about more than if something can be done—it’s about whether it should be done. It’s intended to show whether it solves your business problem, is financially and operationally viable, and what it will take to pilot and scale.
JumpStart—A Value-Based, Guided Process for Technology Innovation
Kopius’ flexible future state and product ideation program, JumpStart, is a framework for innovation designed to help you explore possibilities, narrow down business use cases, and demonstrate value. And while JumpStart is a great launchpad for exploring both traditional and GenAI, it’s also a good fit for other types of innovation. Manufacturing, healthcare, and retail organizations, for example, may want to get a better understanding of their physical environment through IoT. And companies of all types have ideas for digital products they’d like to develop, but just don’t have the capacity.
JumpStart is technology agnostic—often, the solution to a particular challenge includes many integrated approach involving AI, IoT, AR/VR, etc.
The possibilities are endless.
Regardless of what you’re interested in exploring, the foundational process is similar, and typically entails—and it typically wraps up with a proof of value.
Research – First, we explore emerging trends in your space, how early adopters in are using new technologies, and what’s happening in other industries that might be applicable.
Dialog & Discovery – Next, we bring all the key stakeholders to the table to explain any relevant new technology, present the research, and discuss challenges and opportunities.
Brainstorming & Whiteboarding – Then, we brainstorm and whiteboard potential solutions, prioritize by need and impact, and provide space for you to consider next steps.
Proof of Value – Last, we bring together a team to prototype a solution that tangibly demonstrates whether something can be done, and what it will take to make it happen.
The goal of the JumpStart process is to for you to have the information you need to determine if the innovation path you are considering makes sense—whether it’s achievable, what the business case is, what the obstacles are, and if it will drive value for your organization.
While JumpStart typically ends with the proof of value, it’s rarely the end of the project lifecycle. If you’re looking to launch a pilot initiative or scale a program or technology across your organization, we can help with that, too.
JumpStart in Action—Three Real-World Examples of How
Innovation looks different.
To get a better understanding of how JumpStart future state and product ideation workshops can help you innovate and solve your most pressing challenges, I’ve pulled together three real-world examples.
An AI solution for triaging automotive warranty claims – A leading auto manufacturer with a large warranty business wanted to explore how AI could help them triage claims. They needed to understand if it was a practical solution and what implementing it would entail. The JumpStart and proof of value process proved their idea was achievable, but it brought to light some underlying issues around data and integrations. They came away with not only a better understanding of what was possible, but also what it would take to get there.
An IoT solution for monitoring vaccines storage temperatures – A global healthcare nonprofit that provides vaccines needed to monitor the temperatures of refrigerators in remote locations with inconsistent power supplies to ensure the vaccines’ efficacy. The JumpStart and proof of value process was the launchpad for a viable solution that included everything from building a circuit board, to operationalizing it with 1G connectivity in the Azure Cloud. Once the initial project was a starting point for a host of related solutions, including refrigerated backpacks and fanny packs.
A competitive gap analysis for a robotics company’s app – A manufacturer of robotic household appliances wanted to benchmark their app experience and physical against their competitors’ solutions. They needed objective real-world insights into their strengths and opportunities for improvement, so they knew where to focus future development efforts. The JumpStart and proof of value process led to tangible enhancements to both their app and product that improved customer experience.
JumpStart Your Technology Project—and Stay on Track—with Kopius!
At Kopius, we harness the power of people, data and emerging technologies to build innovative solutions that help our customers navigate continual change and solve formidable challenges. To accelerate our customers’ success, we’ve designed a JumpStart program to prioritize digital transformation together.
Posted on January 30, 2025 by Danny Vally, Chief Operating Officer, Kopius
Male IT Specialist Holds Laptop and Discusses Work with Female Server Technician. They’re Standing in Data Center, Rack Server Cabinet with Cloud Server Icon and Visualization.
Enterprise technology adoption typically follows an S curve, with organizations first undertaking frontier innovation, then experimenting, piloting, and scaling, as McKinsey explains in their latest Technology Trends Outlook. But innovation has never been easy, and staying ahead of the emerging technology frontier is an infinite race. It’s hard to take care of today’s problems when you’re focused on tomorrow. Consider AI or GenAI—you may not have in-house expertise, or if you do, their efforts are focused on existing programs. Maybe you just don’t have the time and space to figure out what types of problems emerging technologies can solve and what the best use cases are in your business.
To take advantage of AI and GenAI, innovation and experimentation are necessary first steps. It’s the only way to figure out what’s going to work for your company and to get buy-in before investing.
That’s why more companies are looking to external partners for help.
Technology Experimentation and the Art of the Possible
When IoT was first introduced, it was complicated, and companies didn’t know what it meant for their businesses. So, at Kopius, we started holding future state workshops to help our clients understand what it was all about, the types of problems it could solve, and to identify some specific use cases within their businesses. We quickly came to think of it as the art of the possible.
We’re seeing much the same thing with AI, and to meet the need, we’ve designed a full-fledged innovation and experimentation service offering we call JumpStart.
Our JumpStart process provides a roadmap for frontier innovation and experimentation. It entails:
Research – Over the years we’ve learned how valuable it is to come to the table with a big picture understanding of your business, what the emerging trends are in your space, how early adopters in your industry are using it, and even if other industries are using it in ways that might be applicable.
Dialog & Discovery – Once we’ve wrapped our heads around all that, we bring all the key stakeholders to the table to explain the technology and present the research, which then generates good discussions about the business problems you’re having and opportunities you could potentially take advantage of.
Brainstorming & Whiteboarding – This is where the art of the possible comes to life. Using a design thinking approach, we brainstorm and whiteboard potential solutions to your most challenging problems and opportunities. Then, we prioritize them based on greatest need and impact. We also give you some space to think about what the best opportunity to move forward with is.
Proof of Value – The last step of the process is to demonstrate proof of value. We bring together a multi-functional team to do some light, rapid prototyping that tangibly demonstrates the use case. Proof of value isn’t just about whether something can be done—it’s about whether it should be done. Does it solve your business problem? Is it financially and operationally viable? What will it take to pilot and scale?
While the proof of value typically marks the end of the JumpStart process, it doesn’t necessarily mark the end of our partnership. For many of our clients, it’s just the beginning. Kopius can also pull together the right resources to pilot the project and scale it across your organization.
JumpStart in Action – For a Leading Auto Manufacturer, JumpStart Brought Critical Information to Light
A leading auto manufacturer with a large warranty business wanted to use AI to make more informed decisions about what claims to automatically approve vs. look into more deeply. Before fully investing in the project, they needed to better understand if it was a practical solution and what implementing it would entail.
After some initial research, we brought key stakeholders to the table for in-depth discussions about the possibilities, the opportunities, and their business challenges. Then, we brainstormed and white boarded potential solutions. A big part of this was mapping out a detailed service blueprint that detailed every step of the warranty claim process.
Next, we tackled the proof of value, which brought critical information to light. While the AI solution was possible, they needed to address some upstream challenges before it could be implemented. Since claims were being submitted by so many different people through so many different systems, they would first need to build integrations and standardize the way data was coming in.
This gave the auto manufacturer the necessary insight to weigh the effort and expense vs. the long-term benefits of the undertaking and make an informed decision about moving forward.
The Value of a Fresh Perspective
When you are laser focused on solving today’s problems, it’s hard to break away and orient yourself to the larger world of advancing technology. That’s why an external technology partner like Kopius can be a real asset. We bring fresh perspectives, objectivity, and use cases from within your industry and outside of it to help you drive innovation, experiment, pilot, and scale.
Wherever you are on your AI innovation journey, we’d love to help you explore the art of the possible.
JumpStart Your Technology Project—and Stay on Track—with Kopius!
At Kopius, we harness the power of people, data and emerging technologies to build innovative solutions that help our customers navigate continual change and solve formidable challenges. To accelerate our customers’ success, we’ve designed a JumpStart program to prioritize digital transformation together.
Posted on January 23, 2025 by Hieu (Sam) To, Manager, UX/UI Design
Design thinking is about empathy—putting yourself in another person’s shoes to solve a problem they are facing. User-centered design is about, well, useability. It narrows in on the part of that solution that is tied to a digital or online experience, whether that’s a product, an application, or a website. The two concepts go hand-in-hand, and as Kopius went about building Tucson Medical Center’s (TMC Health) digital front door, both were at the forefront of our thinking.
The reason? Trust.
It’s important for people to be able to trust their health care system and its providers. And we wanted to send that message loud and clear in every digital interaction. Empathy and useability were the keys.
Key Strategies for Overcoming Complexity
Healthcare can be complicated, overwhelming—even scary. A digital front door, which is an online portal or platform where a health care system, its staff, patients, and even their families or other caregivers, can easily interact and access the information, should be designed to make it less so. Design thinking and user-centered design drove every aspect of our approach to building the new site, which we did using the Payload content management system.
Among the many strategies we used, three stand out. First, every decision we made was centered on the user journey, which was a bit tricky, since there was more than one user. Second, we made access to critical information as straightforward as possible. And third, we used visual branding to simplify and guide users.
While these are particularly critical in a health care setting, they are truly universal and applicable when developing any digital product or solution.
1. Prioritize the User Journey—Even on the Backend
When developing any digital product, the user journey should always be your top priority. But in TMC Health’s case, they needed to welcome both new and established patients, and their journeys are very different. For example, new patients are often looking for educational and marketing materials about what the health system offers while returning patients need to quickly find specific services and providers, schedule appointments, etc. We had to create pathways for both.
Digging deeper, we realized those aren’t the only two user personas that matter. TMC Health’s team uses the site to upload and manage content. They had their own user journey that had to be addressed. Not only did we need to structure the backend so they could work efficiently, but we also needed to build guardrails so that they uploaded new content, they didn’t make changes that would impact the user experience.
Websites often must address the needs of more than one user persona, both on the front end and the back. You may not be able to tackle everything at once. That was the case with the TMC Health project, so we took a phased approach. First, we addressed the established patient journey, then the needs of new patients.
2. Make Sure Important Information is Just Two Clicks Away
TMC Health’s previous website grew to include more than 1,300 pages of content. It was a maze to navigate. Our challenge was to simplify it so people could find what they needed with minimal effort. We started by conducting a content audit and inventory, then we built a restructured site map with improved hierarchy that prioritized important information. We also condensed content and sunset out of date information. In the end, we were able to get those 1,300 down to about 400, so that no critical information was more than two clicks away.
Next, we turned our attention to TMC’s internal users. To make sure they could add necessary content without overwhelming the site or patients using it, we developed content writing guidelines tailored for healthcare that focus on clarity, accessibility, and relevance. Then, we streamlined the back end to make it simpler for content writers to manage and update information across the network and reduce the need for training. We also added formatting and character count limits in the CMS to ensure new content was concise and is easy to skim.
While finding the information you need fast is critical when your health is on the line, it’s true on any website. Many companies, especially in the business world, overcomplicate their sites—they want potential customers to spend time on it. But I would caution to pick your moments. Customers come to your site for many reasons—sometimes they need information fast, and other times they’re there to learn. Prioritize accordingly.
3. Use Visual Branding to Create Cohesiveness—and Differentiation
TMC Health is comprised of 10 clinics and facilities. On their previous site, these were all visually branded the same. Typically, consistent branding is a best practice, but in this case, it created confusion for users. Our challenge was to find a way to create alignment with the primary TMC Health brand structure while making it easy for people to quickly differentiate between locations. We solved this by developing an overarching color scheme and using different but visually related colors for each location. Importantly, though, we kept the page layout consistent so users could quickly find or navigate to the information they needed.
This situation isn’t exclusive to healthcare—large corporations with multiple lines of business often face similar challenges. The big takeaway here is that color can provide cohesiveness, but in a situation where everything else is consistent, it can be a differentiator that helps the user—in this case a patient—quickly understand that they are in the right place.
Design Thinking: Empathy Builds Trust
Patient care begins at the digital front door. It’s a healthcare system’s first opportunity to build trust and demonstrate the level of care people can expect throughout their healthcare journey, from routine family care to urgent help in an emergency. A digital front door built on a solid foundation of design thinking and that prioritizes the user journey, can make a real difference in moments that matter, perhaps even saving lives.
JumpStart Your Technology Project—and Stay on Track—with Kopius!
At Kopius, we harness the power of people, data and emerging technologies to build innovative solutions that help our customers navigate continual change and solve formidable challenges. To accelerate our customers’ success, we’ve designed a JumpStart program to prioritize digital transformation together.
Posted on November 5, 2024 by Diego Anfossi, Vice President of Delivery, and Matias Mazzucchelli, Managing Director
Everywhere you go, emerging technology like generative AI (GenAI) is top of mind. Organizations are wisely racing to incorporate it into their workflows to gain insights and efficiencies that will drive customer value and give them a competitive edge. But many of the fundamental challenges that faced IT and development teams prior to the advent of GenAI remain, and chief among them are simply bandwidth and budget. In fact, in the Skillsoft 2023-2024 IT Skills and Salary Report, more than 5,700 respondents identified resource and budget constraints as the number one challenge their organizations face.
At Kopius, we hear this from our clients every day. Your senior team members are so bogged down with day-to-day responsibilities, they don’t have the time to address emergent business needs, much less innovate. But adding headcount is both time-consuming and costly. It takes time and effort to find the right people with the right skills. You don’t always have the budget for full-time staff, or you may only need extra help for a short period of time.
At Kopius, we are excited to introduce Kopius Labs, a new resourcing solution designed to meet you where you are, so you can quickly and cost effectively stand up a team for a pressing, usually short-term project.
Your Team, Your Way—Flexible and Cost-Effective Blended Talent Teams
If you’ve worked with Kopius before, you know our team of inspired realists is our superpower. What you might not realize is how much work we put in behind the scenes to identify the best talent. And we don’t stop there—we also provide continuing education to make sure they’re always at the top of their game. Our near shore, LatAm-based teams are a blend of experts in a broad range of technologies and principles, people with solid, mid-level experience, emerging talent fresh out of Kopius Academy, our certification program, and everything in between.
If you have a small project or short-term need, we can quickly and cost effectively stand-up a Kopius Lab—a team of people with blended levels of expertise, some who are between longer term projects, to close the gap.
Kopius Labs is a win-win for both you and our team members. You benefit from rapidly advancing design thinking, accelerated feature development, and groundbreaking R&D work, and our teams gain rewarding opportunities and valuable experience working on cutting edge projects. All of this is delivered through a cost-effective, blended team structure, ensuring high-impact results without the expense of high-priced resources.
Just tell us what problem you’re trying to solve, and we’ll spin up a custom Kopius Lab to resource it.
Kopius Labs—A Right-Sized Resource Solution
At Kopius, we’re still focused on digital leadership: developing digital products and custom applications powered by technology, data, and IoT. And we still deliver services through all our usual resourcing approaches: future-state workshops, end-to-end project delivery, managed services, and with embedded team members. Now, with the addition of Kopius Labs, we can help our customers quickly fill technical gaps between those larger scale and longer-term projects.
Here are just a few ways Kopius Labs can help:
Managing Daily Operations Every company has operational upkeep—tasks you must do to keep things running smoothly. But it shouldn’t keep your senior team members from contributing where you need them most. Kopius can spin up a Lab to handle the everyday so you can use your team more effectively.
Addressing Emergent Needs No matter how well you plan, something unexpected always comes up. Need to quickly ramp up your technical resources to handle an ad hoc project or augment your team during busy season? Kopius can spin up a Lab so you can scale your team quickly.
Experimenting and Innovating Sometimes, you just need to understand if something is the right approach for your company. Looking to explore a new idea, test something quickly, or whip up a quick proof of concept? Kopius, can spin up a Lab to make sure you’re headed in the right direction.
Kopius Labs is all about scale, flexibility, and speed—at a competitive price, of course.
Innovate and Scale—Quickly and Cost Effectively—with Kopius Labs!
At Kopius, we harness the power of people, data and emerging technologies to build innovative solutions that help our customers navigate continual change and solve formidable challenges. To accelerate our customers’ success, we’ve designed Kopius Labs so you can innovate and scale quickly and cost effectively
Posted on November 5, 2024 by Rob Carek, Vice President, Client Solutions
There is so much intellectual consideration given to the application development lifecycle.
Methodologies like Agile, DevOps, and DevSecOps, which are designed to drive more value by getting new features and enhancements to market faster, with fewer issues, are evidence of this. But very few people think about managing the code lifecycle, at least not beyond a single product. We often just accept the limitations and inefficiencies around code development.
AI-fueled CodeOps is here to change that.
CodeOps is designed to relieve developers of repetitive coding so they can focus on higher level work and accelerate the velocity at which they can get new features and enhancements to market.
Repetitive Coding—and Testing—Is Inefficient
Companies typically align development teams to a single product, and those teams rarely branch outside their own area of focus. The approach has both advantages and disadvantages. On the upside, developers have greater context for their work. They know their products and can build on code they created. The downside, especially for companies with multiple products, is that developers waste large amounts of time writing code that does things that already exist within other products. They’re writing code to do the same thing again and again.
It’s wildly inefficient.
And it’s just not developing code—it’s testing it, too. You develop the code, you develop the test code, you identify and address issues, you release, you fix bugs. The inefficiencies grow exponentially, especially across multiple products. You can see how this might open the company to greater exposure from a security standpoint, as well.
But what if you could find similarities between requirements, develop code to address them, and use it everywhere those requirements exist? What impact would it have on your company, customers, and development teams?
CodeOps Accelerates Velocity—and Value—at Scale
Enter CodeOps.
CodeOps is a methodology that prioritizes reuse of existing code wherever possible. Organizations can use it to reduce development time and get new products, features, and enhancements faster and more securely by reusing, repurposing, or building on code they already have. It entails adopting new ways of thinking, putting new practices and processes in place, and using technology like GenAI to match requirements with reusable, modular pieces of code stored in a code library, so new code is written only when it’s not in the library and/or is truly unique to a single product.
The obvious gains are consistency, efficiency, and security. Products are more structurally similar, and developers aren’t spending hours recoding the same thing dozens of times—or testing it. You already know it works. If your organization uses DevSecOps practices, you know security was a primary consideration in its development. And if there is an issue, once a patch is deployed, it is fixed everywhere it is in use.
But CodeOps is more than just an efficiency play. By using code from the library, even as a starting point, developers can put more time and effort into coding things that are going to have a big impact on your products—things that drive value to your customers and create value for your company. And from a developer’s perspective, that is more interesting, rewarding, and desirable work.
As with agile, DevOps, and DevSecOps, CodeOps requires cultural and process changes. Developers must adopt new ways of working, but they also must be willing to trust the code.
Ignite CodeOps Adoption with an External Catalyst
All the major code platforms—Jira, GitHub, Azure DevOps, Slack—are actively exploring how to integrate CodeOps into their solutions, and third-party tools are emerging, as well. They are all nascent, with some working better than others, which makes it difficult to determine which one will best serve you in the long run. In addition, adopting CodeOps is more than just bolting on a technology solution. Like Agile and DevOps before it, CodeOps requires a cultural shift. Developers must adopt a new mindset and new ways of working. And they must learn to trust the existing code modules enough to incorporate and build on them.
These technical, organizational, and cultural barriers make it challenging to figure out how to get started, especially when your teams have so much to do. Sometimes, it takes an external catalyst to make CodeOps real. At Kopius, we’ve developed a solution to help organizations adopt CodeOps without having to tackle the organization and cultural transformation or make a long-term commitment to a platform that is still figuring out its approach.
First, we use GenAI to intelligently review your backlog and identify commonalities in new requests. Next, we aggregate those requests and develop requirements to address them. Then, we develop code to cover the bulk of those commonalities and validate it with your developers to get their feedback and buy in. The code is stored in the code library and pushed to the right code repositories. Then, when you’re ready to tackle one of those new requests in a sprint, your developers simply pull the relevant code from the repository and use it as-is or as a starting point. As additional new requests come in, the process is repeated.
Companies gain the advantages that come with looking at code across their entire portfolio and maintaining it by feature and functionality, without disrupting existing development processes.
It’s a smart point of entry for any organization wanting to get started with CodeOps today.
CodeOps: A GenAI Approach to Working Smarter, Not Harder
Ultimately, CodeOps solves a fundamental problem that many organizations have—writing the same requirements and code for multiple products. It’s a hard challenge to overcome because the organizational constructs inherent in development teams lend themselves to a product-by-product approach.
But with a little help from GenAI and an external catalyst like Kopius developers can work smarter, not harder and accelerate the velocity at which they can deliver value.
JumpStart Your Technology Project—and Stay on Track—with Kopius!
At Kopius, we harness the power of people, data and emerging technologies to build innovative solutions that help our customers navigate continual change and solve formidable challenges. To accelerate our customers’ success, we’ve designed a JumpStart program to prioritize digital transformation together.
Posted on October 28, 2024 by Kopius Editorial Board with Rob Carek
Rob Carek Explains Why CodeOps is a Win for Businesses, Customers, and Developers
Across the enterprise, in every industry vertical and every operational and functional area, organizations are racing to take advantage of Generative AI (GenAI). It’s already in use in 65% of organizations, according to a McKinsey Global Survey. For software companies, much of the focus has been on using GenAI to generate code. But the approach has challenges. Depending on the tool developers use, the code accuracy rate is only between 31% and 65%, according to a Bilkent University study. The general consensus is it’s buggy and poses hidden security risks.
But software companies and developers now have another meaningful approach to GenAI at their disposal—CodeOps. GenAI fueled CodeOps is an approach that now enables developers to reuse internally owned, fully approved, modular coding building blocks—systematically. And it’s driving a transformational shift that creates business and customer value, unburdens developers of mundane and repetitive coding, and enables them to innovate.
We sat down with Rob Carek, Vice President of Client Solutions at Kopius, to introduce you to CodeOps.
Tell me about CodeOps. What is it and what problem does it solve?
Modern software development processes are wildly inefficient. A fundamental challenge, at least for companies with more than one product or application, is that there’s no practical way to reuse code. So, if you have a suite of 20 products, and every single one of them has a similar feature, your development teams have built that feature 20 different times—and they do it differently, every single time. In theory, a human could pour over requirements and search code repositories to find commonalities and reuse existing code, but that’s just not practical—it would be far more work than just rebuilding it.
But with the advent of GenAI, code reuse is NOW an addressable problem.
CodeOps is a code reuse strategy, and GenAI is not only the enabler, but also the accelerator. The idea is that companies can now develop reusable, modular code and store it in a library or repository. Then, GenAI can be used to search for existing code to use or build on instead of developing everything from scratch.
What are the big benefits of CodeOps?
There are four big benefits that I see: efficiency, innovation, faster time to market, and security. From an efficiency standpoint, since existing code is being repurposed, companies can save a ton of development and testing time. And when you think about how that is amplified across a whole suite of products—well, the gains are almost exponential. And all the time they save, they can spend innovating—building new features and enhancements that are unique to a given product and require original code. It’s the more challenging and interesting part of a developer’s job and where they really want to spend their time, so there’s a human benefit. It also means that things that really move the needle get to market and in customers’ hands sooner.
From a security standpoint, anything in the library is proven code—you know it meets organizational security and compliance standards. But, again, the impact really comes at scale. If you push a patch, everything updates, every vulnerability is closed wherever the code is in use.
Is CodeOps compatible with DevOps and DevSecOps?
Absolutely. The goal of DevOps is to break down silos between development and operations so new products, features, and enhancements get to market faster, more efficiently, and with fewer issues. DevSecOps prioritizes security at every step of the process. But both practices are focused on code development at the product or team level. CodeOps addresses a need at the organizational level, across multiple products. By reusing code wherever possible, CodeOps amplifies DevOps and DevSecOps outcomes—new things get to market even faster, even more efficiently, and with even fewer issues.
How can organizations get started with CodeOps?
Many of the major code platforms are starting to explore CodeOps and looking for ways to integrate it into their solutions, but it’s still very early days. I anticipate the first place they will start is using LLMs to identify commonalities in requirements. That doesn’t account for developing code that fulfills those requirements, and it’s going to be a long while before we see integrated, searchable code libraries. But that doesn’t mean you have to wait until they figure it out to get started.
At Kopius, we’ve developed a solution companies can use to adopt CodeOps today. We use GenAI to look at your backlog and identify commonalities in new requests and aggregate them. Then, we develop requirements and develop code to address them and validate it. The code is pushed to your code repository so when you’re ready to work those requests into a sprint, your developers can access it. It’s a more organic way to build a library of existing, pre-approved code that doesn’t require your teams to operate any differently than they do now.
What will it take to get developers to adopt CodeOps?
Modern development practices are simply not designed for content reuse at scale—there’s no precedent for it. And culturally, developers will look at someone else’s code and think, “I wouldn’t have done it that way.” So, like DevOps, getting developers to adopt CodeOps is going to take cultural change. Kopius’ solution takes that into consideration. It’s a hybrid human / technology approach that builds trust and buy-in by actively engaging developers in reviewing requirements and code and providing feedback. That way, they’ve contributed to it and have more confidence in it.
And as I mentioned earlier, CodeOps frees developers from the repetitive and mundane—things that are table stakes, so they have more time for developing things that are truly innovative. It’s a win-win.
What’s the single, most important thing companies should know about GenAI-fueled CodeOps?
GenAI-fueled CodeOps isn’t just an incremental improvement. It’s a truly transformational shift that will enable organizations to develop code at speed and scale, drive value into customers’ hands at speed, and free developers from the burden of repetitive, mundane work so they can focus on innovating.
Ultimately, GenAI-fueled CodeOps makes the most of what both technology and humans bring to the table—and rapidly scales it.
JumpStart Your Technology Project—and Stay on Track—with Kopius!
At Kopius, we harness the power of people, data and emerging technologies to build innovative solutions that help our customers navigate continual change and solve formidable challenges. To accelerate our customers’ success, we’ve designed a JumpStart program to prioritize digital transformation together.
Every technology project starts with an outcome—a business goal that needs to be achieved. But to achieve that goal, you need to define a set of deliverables, establish a timeline, and determine a budget. Rarely do the timeline and budget line up with the work that needs to be done. There are seldom enough dollars to put the number of people on the project necessary to bring the deliverables to life within the timeline. This is often because of how challenging it is to fully scope a project up front. No matter how thorough you are, new requirements come to light, resulting in scope creep.
Many companies will lean into project management to make everything come together. Smart—a solid PMO practice is the foundation on which all successful technology projects are built.
But you can’t always project manage your way out of this type of problem. That said, there are some things you can do.
Two Key Approaches to Use When Time and Budget are Out of Sync with Project Scope
One of the most complex technology consulting programs I’ve worked on was for a new company in the healthcare space. The budget was a swag from an investor’s presentation deck and was completely out of alignment with the six-month timeline for standing up ERP manufacturing system, provider and patient registration and management portals, and an ecommerce app. Rescoping the project wasn’t an option—if every compliance parameter wasn’t met within the given timeframe, the client would have to wait an entire year to reapply with the organization that had program oversight. In the end, we met the timeline, stayed on budget, and our client was awarded the contract they were after.
We used two key approaches to make it happen. First, we brought all the right stakeholders to the table early to develop standard operating procedures (SOPs). And second, we used those SOPs, as well as compliance guidelines, to build and validate wireframes before standing up MVPs. Then we validated those before coding the actual apps.
Engage the Hive Mind
At the beginning of the initiative, we brought all the key stakeholders together for a series of workshops—one for each app we had to deliver. Every department that had a say was represented—product, engineering, sales, marketing, manufacturing, and legal. Not only did we have a binder on hand detailing hundreds of pages of compliance regulations, but we also had someone on hand who knew them inside and out. Collectively, we walked through every aspect of each app, developing standard operating procedures, strawmen, and requirements.
This hive mind approach meant we could problem solve, make decisions and come to agreements at speed and minimized our chances of going down the wrong path.
My Take
When timeline and budget aren’t in line with the work that needs to be done, you can’t afford to make mistakes. Get the people who hold the answers to your questions in a room and map out your requirements. At Kopius, we call these JumpStarts, and they may take a few days or a few weeks. Then, continue to check in with the same stakeholders at every critical juncture to validate your work.
“Measure once. Cut twice.”
For me, the project management equivalent of “measure once, cut twice,” is wireframes first, MVP second, coding third. And at each of these stages, you need to bring your stakeholders together to validate your work. For the healthcare project, once we had a thorough list of requirements, our UI/UX developed wireframes that we validated with the same group of stakeholders we initially brought to the table. This allowed us to identify and work through any potential issues up front. Then, once the wireframes were validated, we stood up MVPs for each app so stakeholders could walk through the basics of each process and validate it. Only then did we dive deep into coding all the features and functionality for the first release.
My Take
When timeline and budget aren’t in line with the work that needs to be done, the inclination can be to jump right into coding. A better approach is to double down on validating your path forward through JumpStart workshops and wireframing. This will minimize errors—and added time and costs—in the long run.
Expect the Unexpected
No matter how thorough you are in developing your requirements, there are going to be some “ahas” along the way. You have to expect the unexpected and remain flexible. But being flexible doesn’t mean saying yes to everything. Scope creep can derail a project from both a timeline and budget standpoint. For this project, we managed that by getting everyone to agree to a light phase one for each application, then planned to iterate, releasing new features every two weeks after launch.
Looking Ahead: The GenAI Approach
Like many technology companies, Kopius is actively integrating generative AI (GenAI) into our processes, and I’m working on a set of custom GPTs that I believe can make a difference when time and budget are out of sync with requested deliverables. By entering business and technical requirements into it—maybe even a transcript from a discovery session—and asking it to generate common use cases that serve as starting points for designing application features, we can streamline the work involved in building new apps. The prompt engineering requires a lot of up-front effort, but once that initial lift is done, we’ll be able to use it again and again.
Undoubtedly GenAI will deliver thousands of small efficiencies like this, but it’s only part of the equation. The time / budget / scope challenge is an inherent part of software development, and solving it is always going to take a multi-faceted approach.
JumpStart Your Technology Project—and Stay on Track—with Kopius!
At Kopius, we harness the power of people, data and emerging technologies to build innovative solutions that help our customers navigate continual change and solve formidable challenges. To accelerate our customers’ success, we’ve designed a JumpStart program to prioritize digital transformation together.
As the healthcare field rapidly evolves, the digital front door has become a valuable strategy for leveraging technology to deliver a better patient experience while reducing costs. A digital front door encompasses a conglomeration of features, from online appointment scheduling to telehealth visits, all selected to create cohesive, engaging, and high-value interactions.
What Is a Digital Front Door in Healthcare?
In healthcare, the definition of a digital front door encompasses a strategy for engaging with patients through user-friendly digital technology. It often uses technology the patients already have, like a smartphone and app, that unifies the patient experience and connects patients to care across the continuum. In short, a digital front door connects and scales the virtual care journey to give patients what they need, when they need it.
This idea started with traditional patient portals, and the digital front door has evolved to include a more overarching approach centered around patient-centered care and accessibility. Data-driven, highly personalized customer brands like Amazon and Apple are expanding into the healthcare sphere, so staying competitive with consumer-oriented experiences will be nothing short of crucial.
Take appointment scheduling, for example. Surveys show that 67% of patients prefer booking appointments online, and an overwhelming 95% of them are either “somewhat” or “much more” likely to choose a service provider offering online booking. Unsurprisingly, online appointment scheduling is one of the most prominent elements of digital front doors in healthcare.
Some providers use one robust application or portal to meet a virtual front door strategy, although you can do it with multiple systems. Features you might have in a digital front door solution include:
Self-scheduling and care coordination.
Bill pay and payment plans.
Provider communications.
Appointment reminders.
Telehealth.
Virtual forms, such as intake and consent management.
Virtual check-in and pre-registration.
Kiosks for in-office check-in.
Data collection and analytics.
How Does a Digital Front Door Enhance the Patient Experience?
One of the primary goals of digital front doors is to improve the patient experience, which comes with various benefits for patients and providers, like improved clinical outcomes, adherence, and loyalty. With the industry’s shift to value-based programs, designing a great experience throughout the patient journey can also support increased revenue while reducing costs through efficient care delivery.
Using a digital front door helps improve experiences in many areas, such as:
Improving accessibility with flexible, personalized tools.
Supporting providers in delivering more attentive, effective, and efficient care.
Empowering customers to actively manage their health.
Meeting customers where they’re at with appropriate digital technology and options.
Boosting patient loyalty through easy-to-use, convenient, and engaging programs.
Reducing wait times with self-serve resources and streamlined care delivery.
These benefits often overlap and build upon each other. For example, when patients use self-service tools to check in early or submit forms, they reduce wait times in the office and help providers work more efficiently.
Patient Portals vs. Digital Front Doors
While patient portals are often a central element to digital front doors, they shouldn’t reflect your entire strategy. These systems do a great job of putting digital tools in one easy-to-access space. However, they often lack user-friendly designs. Many providers use portals offered by the company that built their electronic health record (EHR). EHRs are complex, unwieldy, and designed for providers. Translating the information into a consumer-friendly program proves challenging.
Similarly, portals may not offer tools to help providers in nonclinical aspects of care. A comprehensive digital front door strategy drives digital innovation through insights, like collecting information on how patients interact with you and how those interactions affect their care journeys. It also provides a more personalized, patient-centric approach. For example, you might offer educational resources for a patient with a new diagnosis, or you could prompt someone to activate reminders after they missed a payment.
Although patient portals are highly valuable, digital front doors address their shortcomings to create more cohesive and user-friendly experiences.
How Data Analytics Drive Healthcare Digital Front Doors
Data analytics is a cornerstone of digital front doors in healthcare. It can help you personalize care and make technology decisions based on real-world data about your patients and services.
Say you collect surveys from patients about their preferred payment methods. You find that many people pay larger sums with credit cards because they don’t have the funds available. With this new insight, you add payment plans to your online portal, helping more people afford care and offering a better experience, simultaneously boosting accessibility and satisfaction.
Leveraging data analytics solutions can help you identify new opportunities of all kinds and measure the efficacy of your digital front door strategy.
6 Tips for Implementing a Digital Front Door
Implementing a virtual front door requires thoughtful planning and consideration for various aspects of your practice. Consider these digital front door implementation tips to boost your chances of success.
1. Craft a Robust Digital Front Door Strategy
Malia Jacobson, healthcare content strategist at Valence, suggests you start by identifying your overarching goals. “When embarking on a digital effort in healthcare, it’s important to start by understanding which changes you need to see in the organization. Are you pursuing improved patient satisfaction scores? Physician satisfaction? ED/Urgent Care wait times? Quality and safety scores? Each area targeted for improvement may influence priorities differently.”
Many healthcare providers are developing digital solutions to address patient satisfaction, reduce service demand, and reduce administrative overhead. In addition to standard features of a digital front door experience, providers should consider designing for experiences such as:
Self-service: Provide tools for bill pay, self-scheduling, care coordination, and finding providers to offer streamlined and convenient access.
Provider messaging and patient outreach: Improve access, loyalty, and engagement.
Information and imaging libraries: Support patient and provider education.
Practice management: Capacity and census management, forecasting, and discharge planning streamline operations.
Insights-driven capabilities: Capabilities like infectious disease tracking, forecasting, and population health initiatives support proactive planning and informed decision-making.
Premium privacy and security: Safeguard patient data and meet compliance requirements.
Adoption-focused activities: Gamification and push notifications help increase awareness and usage of the program.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and automation features: Features like chatbots reduce clinical burden and improve patient flow.
Support for healthcare information exchange: Stay in compliance with Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standards and best practices.
As you ideate your digital products and strategy, it’s important to understand how these features interplay as part of a big-picture roadmap with a rollout timeline and strategy. You don’t have to release everything at once to be successful, and adding features as the platform develops and collects user feedback will future-proof the effort.
2. Keep Your Users Front and Center
“While a digital front door is a technology solution, it’s ultimately about humanizing the patient experience,” says Sam To, designer at Valence.
In the case of a digital front door, the users may be patients, families of patients, or healthcare providers. In nearly all scenarios, people value products that are easy to use and simple to set up and that follow a logical progression. This is especially true in a healthcare situation, which may be hypercharged by personal and situational stressors.
Equitable design should be at the forefront of design decisions because the healthcare organization needs to design for a wide array of users and needs. Fully understanding equitable design is critical to any digital front door strategy.
The design phase of the digital front door project should include user interviews, feedback sessions, prototyping, and more. Giving the UX/UI design team access to users early in the process can help to identify the best-case rollout strategy, reveal opportunities to differentiate from competitors, and deliver precisely the right content to users when they need it — all leading to better patient satisfaction scores.
3. Ensure System Interoperability and Integration
Healthcare organizations often use a wide array of technologies and programs. Your digital front door must connect with relevant systems. For instance, some businesses offer “online scheduling” by having the user submit a form. Then, the provider calls the patient to schedule the appointment. By seamlessly connecting an online tool with your scheduling system, you can provide a much better experience with real-time availability and no time commitment from your team.
Some programs offer easy integrations, while others require clever workarounds. However it happens, integration and interoperability are essential for creating cohesive experiences, achieving efficiency, and maximizing the value of your systems.
4. Get the Right Stakeholders Involved
Yuri Brigance, Valence’s director of software engineering, says, “This is more than a digital shift — the shift to a digital front door requires a culture shift within the organization.”
Experience has taught us that having the right people in the room can make all the difference in the success or failure of a major initiative, especially considering the role that change management plays here. People don’t resist change — they resist being changed. You must engage stakeholders from all impacted groups, from frontline workers to back-office operations. This engagement improves requirements documentation, roadmap planning, and buy-in as the work rolls out.
5. Uphold Security and Patient Privacy
Of course, all digital technology in the healthcare field demands top-notch security. However complex your system is, security and privacy help foster trust, maintain a good reputation, and ensure compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and FHIR.
Key performance indicators (KPIs) and feedback from patients and providers allow you to measure your success after launching a digital front door and long after implementation. Incorporate a data strategy to collect and evaluate this information. Identify metrics relevant to your goals, decide how you’ll collect data, and regularly revisit KPIs to continuously improve upon your strategy.
Get Started on Your Digital Front Door Solution
Building a digital front door requires much more than buying a new software system. This comprehensive strategy requires careful analysis and expert development for your organization’s unique characteristics. With an effective strategy, a digital front door can transform your approach to patient engagement, driving innovation, increasing revenue, and boosting patient satisfaction.
At Kopius, we’ve designed a program to JumpStart your customer, technology, and data success.
Our JumpStart program fast-tracks business results and platform solutions. Connect with us today to enhance your customer satisfaction through a data-driven approach, drive innovation through emerging technologies, and achieve competitive advantage.
Any business that wants to stay afloat must be ready to adapt or risk falling behind. In the fast-paced age of technology, this evolution often comes in the form of digital transformation. This digital-first strategy guides organizations toward improving processes and delivering more value to customers. It combines new technologies with cultural shifts that promote innovation and continuous adaptation. Regardless of your industry, digital transformation is paving the way forward as a necessity for modern businesses.
To define digital transformation, we have to look at how businesses use their resources. A digital transformation strategy uses technologies to fundamentally change how a business operates and provides value. It may involve a range of goals, like adapting to evolving market conditions or improving your ability to meet customer demands. Whatever the goal, a digital transformation solution calls for foundational change at all levels.
Yet, digital transformation is about more than replacing outdated processes with newer technology — although that step is critical. It’s also about challenging “the way it’s always been” and driving the company toward a more agile mindset with openness to experimentation and innovation. Employees may need to accept the possibility of failure, and companies must embrace new practices before their competitors have already implemented them. Digital transformation rethinks tried-and-true practices and seeks out new methods of continual improvement.
This acceptance of new ideas illustrates the need for both cultural and technological development, hallmarks of a successful digital transformation process.
Another crucial aspect is the lack of a clearly defined endpoint. With a focus on innovation, digital transformation doesn’t end when new software is implemented or your efficiency goals are met. It’s more of a journey about building and maintaining an agile culture. Organizations look for ways to continuously improve the customer experience and operational processes.
Why Is Digital Transformation Important?
Digital transformation is nothing short of crucial for today’s businesses. Technology will continue to evolve, and businesses that embrace transformation will be positioned to use it to meet their goals instead of playing catchup or resisting change.
Even if you don’t feel like you need to change, digital transformation has become a question of resiliency. Adaptation ensures you have the resources and mindset to weather storms and market variations — because your competitors are likely already there.
Even after the initial transformation, you should be able to adopt new technologies as they appear and use them to help meet your business goals. Since we don’t know what the future holds, this agile approach allows organizations to keep pace with uncertainty and innovation, improving customer experiences and operational results with changes that span all parts of the company.
An agile culture is all about being flexible and responsive… this flexibility is key in digital transformation, where things move fast and being able to pivot and tweak things based on real-time feedback can make a huge difference.
Alex Arroyo, Project Manager at Kopius
Before tackling a transformation, businesses must understand digital transformation models accurately to implement a strategy that matches their organization. These tactics depend on knowing how digital transformation will apply to a specific business, such as its intended goals and company culture.
The Benefits of Digital Transformation
Although digital transformation is a necessity, it also has many advantages for its users, such as:
Higher efficiency: Digital technologies facilitate better productivity or reduced labor demands. Automation and artificial intelligence (AI), for instance, are rapidly gaining popularity across business strategies, eliminating manual processes, intelligently solving problems, and allowing skilled employees to focus on more important tasks. Digital transformation technologies are especially good at eliminating repetitive tasks, so your team members can work at the tops of their pay grades.
Opportunity for innovation: Embracing digital transformation allows you to get ahead of the competition and solidify yourself as a leader in your industry. It supports agility and responsive practices, so you can jump on new technologies, trends, and ideas that help you stand out. For some businesses, a head start makes all the difference in outperforming competitors.
Improved customer and employee experiences: Both customers and employees expect smooth, seamless resources. Customers want consistent, positive experiences at each touchpoint, while employees want the right tools to help them work their best. These demands are a significant driver for digital transformation strategies and the sophisticated features that come with them.
Improved communication: Successful digital transformation depends on everyone being on the same page. Many digital strategies provide resources for increasing visibility, transparency, and communication between employees, so this element is a significant part of any digital transformation strategy.
Risk mitigation: While a more experimental mindset comes with some risk, the digital transformation process can minimize it by providing a more agile position. Digital-first businesses can respond to volatility and disruptions with business models that can pivot as needed.
Keys to a Successful Digital Transformation
Although the goals and nature of digital transformation will vary by company, the following key elements stand out as necessary parts of the equation.
1. Digital Strategies That Empower Workers
Unsurprisingly, digital transformation calls for best-in-class digital tools. These resources should make information accessible across departments, providing cross-functional digital technologies that support efficiency, the customer experience, and other aspects of your transformation goals. Aligning digital strategies with your unique needs can be daunting, so invest special time and energy in finding appropriate resources.
2. New Operational Procedures to Incorporate Digital Technology
Your long-standing operational procedures are likely inappropriate for your new processes. Remember that digital transformation requires fundamental shifts, so new operational procedures will guide workers through the new systems while reflecting these fresh ways of thinking.
3. Engaged and Tech-Savvy Leaders
Digital transformation depends on engaged leaders at all levels being fully invested in the new approach. They should understand the aim of digital transformation and embody the movement during regular communications and activities. These leaders must also have the appropriate technical skills to fully grasp how to integrate new tech and processes into their workflows. Leaders can include executives, supervisors, and even workers chosen to champion the cause.
4. Strong Communication and Collaboration
Any business attempting digital transformation must go all-in. A “halfway” approach is inadequate, so communicating the goals and ideals driving the transformation is critical. You’ll also need to discuss the details, showing team members how these new resources contribute to modernizing the organization. Dive into how the culture shifts support the company’s long-term goals and dedication to the digital approach.
Poor communication: We mentioned earlier that good communication is key to a successful transformation program, and many of the attempts that don’t succeed involve poor communication. Early on, leaders should identify what “digital” means to them. In one organization, it might mean going paperless, while another might use it to implement agile processes. With so much ambiguity, strong communication is crucial from the highest levels — they should define what the transformation means for the business and how it should happen.
Inadequate measurement: Like many business strategies, qualitative and quantitative measurements should guide the process. You may already use key performance indicators (KPIs). Continue to use them, and evaluate which ones are most relevant to the digital transformation and create new ones if needed. If your goal, for instance, is to improve the customer experience through a new tech support system, you might pay special attention to your net promoter score. If you’re prioritizing efficiency, ticket resolution speed may be more relevant.
Culture misalignment: People often equate digital transformation with implementing high-tech tools, but businesses must stress the mindset shift, too. The transformation should include a focus on agility and responsiveness, with ideas that change alongside digital technology. Cultural changes must occur across the organization to help foster innovation and new ideas appropriate for a modern workplace. Many businesses that fail digital transformation do so because they don’t emphasize the cultural change it entails.
Digital Transformation Strategies
Depending on your goals, your digital transformation solution can take on many different forms. Some popular strategies for digital transformation models might focus on:
Business processes: This kind of digital transformation adjusts the day-to-day workflow and how workers access information. It might involve heavily automating manual processes and gathering reliable and data-driven insights that can guide business decisions. Revising business processes can help you minimize costs, improve product quality, and boost efficiency with faster and more informed procedures.
Industry domains: If your brand is traditionally limited to one market, you might look to a digital transformation model to help you expand your offerings. A fitness store, for example, could use digital strategies to create a fitness app and sell virtual workouts to appeal to customers and build their brand image. Expanding the boundaries of the brand is a task that often falls to digital transformation.
Business models: A transformation that affects the entire business model can be drastic but necessary. This approach adapts your current model to a new digital environment, whether that’s an environment you’re creating anew or one that just hasn’t been working well with your old processes. It might call for trying out new ways of operating, even those that no one else in the industry has done yet. In some cases, nailing this transformation disrupts entire industries.
Culture: Adapting to the digital world is difficult for some people and businesses. A cultural transformation focuses on aligning a company’s culture with the forward-thinking ideas of a digital-first organization. It requires extensive education and training, new onboarding processes, and activities and processes that support collaboration. This type of transformation gives your team the necessary resources to integrate digital technology into every aspect of the workday and maximize its benefits.
The cloud: A cloud transformation is about moving systems into cloud environments. You may only need it for a few applications or services, or you might move everything. A cloud-based infrastructure helps improve data access and storage, flexibility, and scalability. It offers a more centralized and visible system and can grow alongside your business.
Of course, the lines between these styles of transformation aren’t hard and fast. They often blur and overlap, so identifying what digital transformation strategy is right for your goals and needs can help improve your chances of success.
Digital Transformation Examples
The digital strategies available in different industries often affect the nature of digital transformation and its necessity. Here are a few of the ways that businesses in certain fields or departments might address digital transformation.
1. Health Care
The health care field has seen a dramatic technological transformation. From online check-ins to telehealth appointments, physicians now use digital technology to improve experiences and outcomes across all specialties. At Kaiser Permanente, for instance, about a third of ambulatory care visits in 2022 happened through phone or video calls. Supporting this level of virtual care requires a major shift in infrastructure and mindset.
A health care organization might use digital transformation to better use and integrate new technologies and support clinicians in effectively using these new strategies in their workflow. With capable, easy-to-use systems, health care businesses often improve outcomes and the patient experience while helping providers work more efficiently.
2. Customer Support
As AI and self-service platforms have improved, many businesses with customer support systems have revamped how their customers get help. With digital transformation, a company might reduce the demands on its slow, labor-intensive call center in favor of a support portal for customers to use on their own. Customers might start a return request, track their order, or search through frequent technical issues to troubleshoot the problem in an online knowledge base. The new system can add efficiency while improving the customer experience.
3. Sales and Accounting
Sales and accounting rely on many processes that digital strategies can speed up and refine. A digital transformation in these fields often entails programs that can automate calculations and communications. For example, using traditional spreadsheets for sales tracking would likely lead to errors and slow processes. Moving to a cloud-based system, such as a customer relationship management (CRM) platform, offers efficiency and simplicity. Representatives can easily track interactions, generate quotes, and communicate with clients without time-consuming paperwork.
Get Started With Your Digital Transformation
Digital transformation is a necessity for organizations of all types, offering the agility and modern resources required to compete in today’s business environment. Still, it involves a dedicated, concerted effort with the right kind of talent guiding the charge. You need everything from software engineers to data scientists and brand strategists. At Kopius, Inc., we’ll help you assemble the right team and solidify a successful program with our digital transformation services.
We offer dual-shore digital expertise with end-to-end capabilities to support speedy, effective digital transformations. From our lean, agile roadmaps to our data and analytical services, we provide flexible yet streamlined strategies tailored to your organization’s unique demands. Reach out to us today to discuss your needs and start on the path to digital transformation!
