In the age of the customer, your company must exploit digital assets in order to deliver world-class customer experiences and compete effectively. But moving the business from its traditional roots toward digital mastery requires the executive team to paint a compelling digital business vision.
 
Based on my latest research published in March — How To Craft A Better Digital Vision — here are three suggestions to help your firm develop a compelling digital vision:
 
1. Illustrate what customers will value in the future. The way your customers derive value from your products and services today will not be the same in the future. Your business will need to use digital technology to create new sources of value. Instead of simply designing a physical product or service to be used by a customer to satisfy a need, your firm must reimagine your products and services as digital services enhanced by physical products and people. Customer perceptions of value will be shaped by the digital experiences you create to help them achieve their desires. Your digital vision must help employees understand this shift.
 
2. Show how your relationship with the customer will change. In the future, your customers will use digital connections between products and brands to satisfy their desires. They will form perceptions of your brand's value through the connections you enable for them to achieve their desires. You must reimagine your products inside a dynamic ecosystem of value, connecting with other digital services based on the customer's needs. Your digital vision must describe your business at the center of a larger ecosystem. Consider how Nest has partnered with energy companies to create more value for its customers (see video below).
 

 
 
3. Make your vision dynamic enough to change with customer expectations. There can be no doubt that our expectations are changing quickly. With each passing year, we expect new digital apps to make our lives just a little bit easier and save us time. Your digital vision must be able to evolve alongside your customers' evolving expectations.
 
If your firm has a digital vision that's published, please share it in the comments below.