This is a guest post, written by...Cupid.
Back in the day, I was unrivaled in my role as the bringer of true love. The old saying really is true – you snooze, you lose. I thought my industry was one that couldn’t be modernized, I mean come on…what’s more enduring than love? Boy, was I wrong.
I really believed that I had the whole love thing locked up – I mean, really…when you think of falling in love, who do you think of enabling that but Cupid? Throughout history, my arrows have flown straight and true, bringing true love to those who need it most.
But then, it happened. First, there were personal ads. I knew that I had to be able to scale quickly, so I outsourced my arrow production to Santa’s elves. Confident that my brand awareness would drive me through the passing fad, I thought I could scale fast enough to meet demand. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The orders for soulmates were coming in faster than I could keep up…and people were starting to work around me.
Enter the industry disruptors. Match.com. Tinder. eHarmony. They were popping up faster than I could register with them to complete my market research. Even Facebook, with its “relationship status”. All of these disruptive companies embraced digital transformation, looking at new ways to bring like-minded singles together. By embracing digital transformation, these companies were able to fully leverage the changes and opportunities of digital technologies, with both present and future opportunities in mind.
Cloud solutions enabled my competitors to scale quickly, they could bring on additional resources in a matter of minutes, while my backlog of arrows went on for months. Quite simply, I just couldn’t keep up. They were able to quickly and easily conduct A/B testing – is swiping right more impactful than swiping left? They were even able to get to new markets faster – I could only get to a market as fast as my wings would fly, while they were everywhere, all the time.
What can you learn from the undoing of my business?
I became the classic example of how companies are to slow to react and pivot when necessary. I was slow and arrogant when it came to shifting to modern technology – I really believed that while my arrows might be slower to arrive, they brought better quality results.
Goodwill and brand awareness will buy you time, but it doesn’t guarantee anything. A small, motivated organization with a plan and a vision can scale quickly and easily with today’s technologies, and they may be your next big competitor. Any industry can embrace digital transformation. Why aren’t you?