A few years back, I was spending an evening with a friend when he narrated an amusing story. For his business, he needs to travel a lot and sometimes at short notice. On one such occasion, he did not get time to book his hotel and walked directly up to the reception. Being a frequent guest there he was quite aware of the room rent and was surprised when the receptionist quoted a much higher price. Even when he explained that he was used to a lower rate, she would not budge. Standing at the counter, he looked up a travel portal on his smartphone and got a much lower rate. He checked in at the discounted price, which the receptionist had not been willing to offer.

This experience was not very uncommon till around five years back, when the companies had two distinct operations for digital and physical channels. While it has matured with time, there are still many such glitches where businesses have not been able to manage convergence well. Needless to say that it was frustrating for any consumer to pay a higher price at the store when free delivery is offered from the marketplace at a much-discounted price.

I firmly believe that this disparity needs to go, and fast.

While there is no denying that in today's world, digital is the way forward, companies that abruptly dumped their existing physical processes to bet on digital ones run the high risk of losing both ways. Discarding physical assets that got success to the company in the past, to venture into unknown territory in a hurry is like pushing away the real value that the customers saw in them in the first place. Transformation, as in all other cases, needs to be well planned and at a comfortable speed.

Looking from the other side of the table, though less now, after the lockdown many companies are still sceptical about taking the digital route, waiting for others to take the plunge while they follow. There might be situations where these entities will not be able to pick up speed and perish over time. Taking a cautious step does not necessarily imply that you cannot take the first step. “Who else has done it” may be a phrase that needs to be discarded. Every digital initiative needs to be evaluated on its merit and not on precedence, and then aligned to the present business model with proper change management.

I keep reminding my team and those who have started their entrepreneurial journey with assistance from VFS that physical and digital processes have their own merits and how much we adopt them depends on the nature of business.

Modes of executing processes should facilitate business operations. It should never be the other way around.