Tag: Digital platforms

Advice for buying or building a digital platform | Sherpas in Blue Shirts

As digital technologies mature and become applicable, they present a tremendous opportunity for companies to rethink and rearchitect their business to create better client experience, better quality results and lower costs. These opportunities are broad and extensive. At the core of all digital transformations is the assembling and perfection of a digital platform. But companies need to better understand what’s involved in digital platform. Whether the objective for the platform is as grandiose as transforming an industry or as mundane as improving a mailroom service, many companies make a big mistake when looking to build or buy a digital platform.

Let’s consider two examples of digital platforms aimed at transforming the companies’ operations and costs. A construction company built a digital platform to improve productivity and safety of several hundreds of subcontractors. The firm used geofencing technologies and implemented RFID technology and sensors into the workers’ helmets. The technology alerts supervisors if workers enter a zone they are not authorized to enter.

In another initiative, the company built a platform to improve utilization of its materials and equipment moved to different locations and even different countries. The objectives are to increase efficiencies and better monitor the life cycle of these items. RFID technology and sensors placed on the equipment and materials is, again, a key technology in the platform.