Blog 4

Reflect on the value of the learning digital business module.

General describes

With time flies by, this module is ending. Learning about business in a digital perspective is a totally new experience. From digital business module, I’ve learned the digital is a significant tool to save companies or help companies to extend. As my second and third blog mentioned, digital business module not only benefits financial-related companies, but also other types of companies, like pharmaceutical companies. As long as companies can use digital tools properly, it definitely can help companies doing their business better. 

What I’ve learned

Before the start of this module, I did not have a comprehensive understanding of what can digital do in business, I thought digital can only help some financial companies to extend their business or improve office efficiency. However, this module gives me a totally new perspective about how digital can save a traditional and almost broke company, and transferred it to a successful modernized company. Like I wrote about the Wire and Plastic Products plc, the CEO decided to use digital tool help the company itself to transferred from a traditional advertising company to one of the biggest and successful company in the world. Furthermore, in my third blog, I’ve mentioned the pharmaceutical companies also benefits from digital business. It can clearly show what can digital do in different business industry.

What I will do in the future

This module gives me a great new idea about using digital business to operate or extend a company’s business. Digitizing is an unstoppable trend, also it is a challenge for all the companies to adopt it and use it properly. Thinking business things in a digital way can solve almost business problem, so if I work for a traditional company in the future, give advice about using digital business is my best choice, otherwise, this company cannot have a long-term development. Or if I work for a company which already did great in digital perspective, I will still use digital perspective to think about what I do in work, digital business is the key to keep a company have a long-term development.

Video

In the link below, I made a short video about other blogs I’ve seen, and some comments I’ve wrote about it. From other students blogs, I also learned a lot about digital business can actually help how many different types of companies get benefits, and what I didn’t notice in my blogs.

https://www.facebook.com/yang.hu.71653/videos/276495383278376?sfns=mo

References:

https://wordpress.com/block-editor/post/yang.tech.blog/25

https://wordpress.com/block-editor/post/yang.tech.blog/22

http://yuransdigitalblog.business.blog/2019/02/10/opportunities-and-challenges-of-jd-chinas-online-and-offline-operation/comment-page-1/#comment-2

http://siyi.home.blog/2019/03/02/the-use-of-digital-marketing-to-help-traditional-company-transform-and-upgrade-a-case-of-wantwant/comment-page-1/#comment-10

https://beloisli.wordpress.com/2019/03/03/how-the-digital-business-model-contributed-to-tencents-success/comment-page-1/#comment-8

http://tongsdigitalblog.business.blog/2019/02/10/the-opportunities-and-challenges-of-alibaba-s-ecosystem/comment-page-1/#comment-5

Novartis —A successful case of using digital in pharmaceutical field

Blog3: Drawing upon an organisation with which you are familiar, evaluate the ways in which it’s digital business model has contributed to its success.

Background

The digital revolution in business area has spawned a consumer revolution oriented to growing information needs. With the advent of new technology tools, consumers are becoming easier to get their health data, also with developing in material world, the public are more concerned about themselves, especially their health problem, which will change the relationship between healthcare providers, customers and pharmaceutical companies.

The current consensus is that constant digitization of healthcare requires pharmaceutical companies must changing their traditional behaviors to keep their competitive, like integrate data which related or not related to health to build a whole healthcare database. Novartis is a typical pharmaceutical company who did extremely successful in digital area.

What Novartis did in digital area

Novartis did three main things in digital area, first thing is use digital technology to change the process from pharmaceutical companies to doctors and finally to the patients and develop new drugs with digital technology. Novartis think “digital technology is transforming the whole healthcare industry, affecting the entire process from drug development to doctors providing medical treatments to patients”, such as sensor applications that are helping researchers and doctors to get more patient feedback on treatments for more precise treatment. Also, the increased incidence of cancer and chronic diseases requires healthcare services offer better services. These changes will force promote the application of digital technology in the healthcare industry and bring better medical services to the public.

One of Novartis’ key strategies is to drive digital transformation and strengthen its position in the healthcare sector. For instance, to visualized this strategy, Novartis designed a mobile applications, which aim to treat drug abuse and help people with diabetes manage the disease have been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to combine traditional medicines with digital technologies that help patients follow healthy behaviors, this mobile application is expected to improve the quality of healthcare and medical treatment for patients.

Secondly, Novartis pay a lot attention to digital transformation of clinical research and market data analysis. At the end of July 2018, Novartis announced a partnership with SHYFT company which belong to Medidata, this collaboration include of two main components: build a database named STRATA for aggregating and managing an increasing number of third-party and proprietary business data sources; and design a LUMEN Insights Platform to extracts value from historical data and provides guidance for business purposes. In this collaboration, Novartis expand its own health database and extend use data efficiency from clinical to market.

Finally, Novartis working share on health data in their database through Cloud, Novartis announced the appointment of Bertrand Bodson who leaded Sainsbury’s Argos successfully transferred to an online retailer from a traditional retailer, as its Chief Digital Officer in August 2017. Bodson will control the developing and implementing a company-wide digital transformation strategy, including efforts to improve the company’s ability to use data in drug discovery and development. The data was collected from their customers will be voluntary shared with other pharmaceutical companies. Also, collaborate with other stakeholders, like patients and doctors, and automate their whole business processes.

Evaluation of Novartis’ behaviours

Novartis is a good example of handle the changing trend and maintain its dominant position in the healthcare field, digital transformation is an important strategy of Novartis.

With the development of embedded deformation chip in recent years, Diovan, an antihypertensive drugs with embedded deformation chip was developed by Novartis, has been applied in clinical trials, chip will record the data from patients’ inside body and provide the data back to Novartis which can help Novartis and doctors receive the information about the patient immediately and sustainable. Novartis can maintain its dominant position rely on these data, and because of these useful data can shared via digital technology like mobile phone and Cloud, patients and Novartis can check it at anytime and any location. Sharing health data and drugs develop data, it is a very efficient way to use each participator’s advantage, reduce the costs of develop new drugs and the risk of clinical trials, it can help Novartis to develop more drugs to satisfy their customers, on the other hand, it is a clever way to attract more new customers.

Reference:

Champagne,C., Hung, A. & Leclerc, O. (2015). How pharma can win in a digital world. Retrieved from:

https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/pharmaceuticals-and-medical-products/our-insights/how-pharma-can-win-in-a-digital-world

Of Weak. (2018). Novartis Digital Innovation Analysis. Retrieved from

http://mp.ofweek.com/medical/a645673626366

Blog 2: The digital opportunities and challenges in Wire and Plastic Products (WPP) plc

With the use of digital tools developing in worldwide business, the requirement of using digital tools and address the opportunities and challenges happened in digital and physical location properly is a big question for all companies which want to survive or expand in the more and more rely on the digital tools’ world. For both traditional physical business organisation and new operating digital business companies, a good identification of opportunities and challenges presented by operating in both digital and physical locations will help them to address these chances and challenges and expanding in both digital and physical area better. Digital transformation, is not at all an easy undertaking for organizations, whether big or small. There are a number of digital challenges facing businesses as they attempt to change the way they do business,like enhancing customer experience, engagement of employees, handling competition.

Operating business in both digital and physical location could provide more market to organisations, also a good chance for clients to know the products. For instance, advertising in both underground and some daily use smart phone app or website is the most efficient way to make the brand or product to be well known. So this blog will use the Wire and Plastic Products (WPP) plc as an example to the straight the topic question.

WPP plc is one of the worlds largest to communications services groups which operated in 1971. It is made up of leading companies in: Advertising; Media investment management; Information, insight & consultancy; Public relations & public affairs; Branding & identity and Healthcare and Specialist communications. The traditional way to do advertising is put advertisements on local newspaper or any other physical things, it let local residents get more information about the local companies brand, help local organisations to get more local market. But the obvious problem also showed in this period, it is not easily for the customers to finding overseas products, because the advertisement companies are also locally, even some trading companies want to expanding overseas market, it is not convenient to communicate with local advertising companies. Especially after entering the 21 century, the amount of cross-border trading increased dramatically, the need of advertising world wild also increased.

With the processing of the digital using, people are more likely to use digital tools rather than physical stuffs, like website V.S. newspaper. The famous American newspaper company Tribune Co asked bankruptcy in 2008, one reason is the need of physical newspaper is decreased sharply. If WPP plc still doing advertising a traditional way, the future of the company is failure. So in 2018, WPP plc is merging its famous JWT agency with its digital outfit Wunderman in the most high-profile move by the world’s biggest advertising group to simplify is business. This movement make the two most important and the strongest parts in WPP plc combine together. “(This) allows us to compete more effectively in the sectors with the most significant opportunities for future growth.” said by Read. The CEO of the WPP plc use this strategy to build the relationship between companies and their customers. Firstly, use Data to collect the information about the product from the company, and then collect the public preference by Big Data Technology, use new digital media technology to make video advertising to show the product while meets the preference of the potential customers, it helped WPP plc to become one of the biggest advertisement organization in the world.

The aim of this strategy is to provide a huge network to the employees to share innovation ideas and integrate these functions, this may help WPP plc to establish a tight band with their clients. Besides that, WPP plc don’t give up the traditional advertising market, still put the advertising on the newspaper to attract the elderly people’s eyes, and post the posters on the public transportation to influence the commuters potentially.

In conclusion, sharing data is the essence advantage of operating business in a digital location. The best things that today’s businesses can do is to change their business models to place a greater emphasis on digital technology as well as partner and customer collaboration and interaction.

Reference:

BARUCHIN, U. (2016). The challenges and opportunities of brands going digital.Retrived from:

https://www.superunion.com/insights/the-challenges-and-opportunities-of-brands-going-digital/

DOGRA, R. (2016). Top Digital Challenges Before Organizations Today and How To Overcome Them. Retrived from:

https://www.netsolutions.com/insights/top-digital-challenges-before-organizations-and-how-they-can-overcome-them/

Holton, K. (2018). WPP combines famous JWT ad agency with digital arm Wunderman. Retrived from:

https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-wpp-restructuring/wpp-combines-famous-jwt-ad-agency-with-digital-arm-wunderman-idUKKCN1NV1SS

Merced, M. (2008). Tribune Files for Bankruptcy, Retrived from:

https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2008/12/08/tribune-files-for-bankruptcy/

Picture source from eMarketer, March 2018.

The job tax consultants do changed in the digital world

Choose a job role (or career path) with which you are familiar. In what ways has this role 1) already changed in the digital economy, and 2) be likely to change further in the future? 

The digital technology change the world so quickly in various way, like the way people purchase things, as the same time, it also changed many careers, for instance, how tax consultant do their job. In the last few century, people who doing the tax consultant job have to collect all the new tax information that might be used in their working time via newspaper or some printed policy, and give advice to their client face to face. This process waste lot of time on extra working like having conversation with different people to get the latest information or find new policy from different government department, also it take lot of time on sharing information with other tax consultants.

But in recent years, especially in recent two decades, the digital technology greatly improved the situation. Tax consultant start to use some special APP to post the information which they know it might help other people who doing the same career, besides that, tax consultants can collect the information they need about new published policy from government website, and then give advice to their client via an email directly instead of have conversation face to face, help taxpayers fill the tax forms by video call. Instead of deliver these taxpayers forms to the government tax department hand by hand, now tax consultants can automatically upload information by internet.

Although there are so many advantages that already helped tax consultants improve their work efficiency, it still not enough. The amount of multinational corporations growing faster and faster, it is a quite hard problem to get all the information in different countries for tax consultants because there is a lot of cross border transactions, it might be a challenge in the next decades. In the future, tax consultants could find all tax related information or new published policy from different countries, ignore the border. Also, share information between tax consultants would be more effectively, and could contacting clients worldwide, not only be limited in one particular country. The digital business world have already changed the world impressively, and it will keep going to change more and more careers not only the tax consultants.

Yang.