The Coronavirus pandemic is forcing companies to go digital. Anyone who does not have a clue when digital gibberish such as for example „MVP“ or „ROI“ are used, will in future be given regular, easy-to-understand explanations of digitalization terminology in our series "Digital Solutions".
With 35 years of experience in the digitalization, automation and electrification of mobile machines, we support our customers with customized workshops, the right concepts and suitable system architectures.
People spending their hard-earned money usually expect to receive something in return, preferably as soon as possible. So much for the common theory behind the generally accepted and quite popular means of exchange and payment in our society. In practice, the whole thing is still quite simple and clear when buying food in the supermarket. Simply put the required items in the shopping cart, go to the checkout, pay – done. And because most of the time, well-known and trusted products end up in the shopping cart, the risk of having bought something that you do not like or that does not serve its purpose is comparatively low. However, when a company "goes shopping" and for example invests a lot of money in a project, then this is frequently accompanied by a greater and not always easily calculable risk. In particular when it comes to digital products, even the right shopping list could be a challenge. Also, it is often not clear how to determine the equivalent value and evaluate it reliably. Is new turnover generated? Are savings achieved?
Anyone who has ever gone shopping for the week hungry and without a shopping list may have learned the hard way that such a venture can be quite expensive. Arriving at home, you might also have had to find out that half the things you bought might not have been necessary at all. A hearty breakfast and some planning would actually have saved real money. A similar situation might occur when a new digital solution is created purely out of an infatuation with technical technology. Just because an invitingly appetizing web interface in the browser looks so delightfully modern, a sophisticated user management system with all the trimmings could be set up and the possibility to literally send all the available data through the airwaves into a cloud exists, does not necessarily mean that a valid business case has automatically seen the light of day, generating huge amounts of new revenue and immediately making a profit. What are the benefits of the solution? Who benefits from it? Which problem will be solved? How can the success be measured? How can the risk be minimized? A very helpful approach is the so-called Minimum Viable Product (MVP). The question here is what needs to be developed for the minimally functional version of a product in order to cover already relevant customer, market or functional requirements with the least possible effort, while at the same time getting the feedback from stakeholders necessary for further development. Agile software development with its short iteration cycles and one executable software version at the end of each development loop is ideally suited for this purpose. This way, the greatest possible amount of feedback can be generated with minimal effort, thus minimizing the risk and allowing for readjustments of the requirements if necessary. STW's MACHINES.cloud modular system is also designed to generate such MVPs in the shortest possible time and with minimal effort, and to present new digital products to a large group of users for validation. The overarching goal is always to achieve quantifiable success for the capital invested as quickly as possible. And this is exactly what a fast return on investment (ROI) means.
So we strongly recommend a hearty breakfast and further research on the topics of ROI and MVP on the relevant search and knowledge portals as well as a visit to the STW website to anyone wishing to save money in the digital transformation process.
About STW
As an internationally active company with Headquarter in Kaufbeuren, we stand for the digitalization, automation and electrification of mobile machines for 35 years. With generic or customer-specific products, systems and solutions developed and manufactured at our headquarters in Germany, we support our customers with innovative technology on their way to making their machines the best in the world.
Supplemented by partner products and accompanied by our training, support and system teams, we help medium-sized companies and large OEMs to increase the performance and efficiency of their machines and increase safety. Through communication between machines, connectivity with our cloud platform and additional partner services, we enable the integration of mobile machines into business processes.
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