A digital product consultant – your guide to successful digital transformation
Making the digital transformation is now a reality for many modern companies across the world. In this current era, businesses are making the transition from analogue to digital solutions, but with mixed success due to a lack of knowledge and expertise. What can companies do to accelerate their digital transformation? One solution is to work with a digital product consultant.
What is a digital product consultant?
In general terms, a consultant is someone who can provide specially tailored advice to clients in a particular field that they specialise in. The ‘consultant’ could be an individual working solo, a small team or a large company providing consulting services to a customer.
A digital product consultant is a specific type of consultant who is an expert in digital product innovation and development. Digital product consultants are professionals who understand the full process involved in developing digital products such as websites, applications, Saas, online services and so on.
Why are digital product consultants useful?
The main reason a company may reach out to an external consultant of any kind is to help them to implement strategies to reach their goals in a manner that they can’t (or don’t want to) do themselves. It is a great way to bring in outside experts to run over key areas of businesses in order to optimise processes for the best results.
A great digital product consultant will help their customer to break down their products piece by piece in order to get a comprehensive overview of what it involves. This means looking at everything – starting from the ‘big picture’ features of the digital product and the tools used to get there, right through to the tiny details, the hidden processes and the real nuts and bolts of the operation.
Having a good digital product consultant can be invaluable, as they can look at the product in ways you never thought of and suggest ideas and changes which are beyond the scope of your current team.
What do digital product consultants do?
In short, a digital product consultant can help their client to digitally transform their company and its processes to some degree. Although each digital consultant’s approach may vary slightly, they will broadly follow similar stages:
The discovery stage
Consultants carry out a discovery workshop where they provide their customers with a full roadmap of the product, which includes information regarding their product’s features and a full analysis of the product to fully understand what is it, how it works, what processes are involved and so on. This analysis uncovers what needs to be done, who the users and stakeholders are, and the best way to connect with them via the product.
The strategy stage
After discovering what the product is all about, the consultant’s research then helps to determine objectives and methodologies to establish a clear roadmap to achieving the client’s goals.
The development stage
Once the methodologies are in place, it’s essential to keep on developing, testing and quality checking the digital product so that the standards and effectiveness are not sacrificed during the process in any way. This stage can also include getting real user feedback in order to drive the development in the most important areas, with the focus on advancing the product in the most effective and efficient manner.
The support stage
Once the product has been mapped, refined, optimised and is functional, the digital consultant is then on hand to provide ongoing support to their client for the foreseeable future. They will help customers to understand their products, drive marketing programs, ensure the long-term success of the product meeting its business goals and so on.
What skills can digital product consultants offer a company?
Digital product consultants must encompass a wide range of skills to help them perform their jobs successfully. While individual consultants may be specialised in one or two specific areas, a professional team of dedicated consultants will bring with them a wide range of skills and specialisms that are a huge benefit to the customer and their organisation.
There are a wide number of areas in which digital product consultants could help clients in their business. Some of them include:
- Building a business roadmap – Understanding the customer’s business objectives and goals, and mapping out the market.
- Creating a digital strategy – Improving a business with the use of technology, e.g. cloud migration or process automation.
- Creating business cases – This could include digital product roadmapping and evaluation, scoping products, market segmentations and assessing the businesses’s competition.
- Problem-solving – Identifying the challenges and business opportunities for the customer to get a solution that works best for them.
- Training – Getting the customer’s team up to speed on all the digital transformation processes and techniques that the consultants implement so that they can work towards self-sufficiency and product optimisation in the future.
Summary
Digital product consultants are a valuable tool for companies looking to optimise their digital transformation. As well as bringing a range of specialist skills and know-how to their client’s business, they are able to analyse and dissect companies and really go through the finer details and give a fresh perspective.
Digital consultants can implement valuable solutions in software product design and help train staff to understand these changes to future-proof their efforts. Working with digital product consultants is a fantastic way to accelerate a company into the digital world.
