Digital platforms are the venues of the online space. Social media is where people interact, a place where online shopping websites are equivalent to malls you can find various merchants. This is why maintaining these spaces is critical to ensure that conversations run smoothly. For digital businesses, keeping up with market demands means maintaining these “venues” so that customer experience is at its best.

On-Demand Group (ODG) was successful in recent efforts to achieve the development and support of digital platforms for one of its clients. As tech professionals, having skills and familiarity with developing digital platforms will keep you on-demand as netizens continue to grow in number and savviness with how to interact through the internet.

This post will share an ODG success story on how they achieved scale and maturity for a client’s digital platform and what steps were taken to keep it at par with current technology demands.

Scaling and Digital Maturity Come Hand in Hand. 

Just like living things, digital platforms also undergo evolution. However, websites, social media platforms, and online shopping portals cannot evolve by themselves; they need to be updated to cope with the demands of the current era. As much as there are tools like automation and artificial intelligence, human intervention still has to be used to help a platform scale and mature.¹

There are numerous reasons why a digital platform has to undergo scaling:

Increase in users. Social media sites, for example, that grew in popularity and have to welcome additional users. The website’s capacity to store additional info or take on increased traffic has to be addressed through improved features.

Digital product improvements. Companies that use their digital platforms to sell products or services also have to scale to keep up with the competition. Whether through better products or an improved consumer experience, scaling can answer questions on how corporations can get ahead in the digital marketplace.

Trends in web design. The past years saw various improvements in user experience regarding web design. From interactive graphics to kinetic typography, digital platforms have become more vibrant and pleasing to the eye.² However, website capacities have to adjust as well.

Device support. Platforms are not limited to websites. Many companies and institutions can be accessed through apps you can install on your mobile devices. However, apps and websites must adjust to these devices for better reach, which can be solved through scaling. For example, websites must have a mobile-friendly version.

Immediate scaling of these platforms is often concerned with the latest developments in digital technology. In some cases, specific platform infrastructures have become obsolete. Instead of having to build the digital platform again from scratch, web developers only have to provide some tweaks to be at par with a much-needed digital transformation.

This is where digital maturity comes in.³ A digital platform that is able to handle the latest innovations can be labeled as “digitally mature” and thus be adequate for scaling.

ODG Recently Achieved Success in Digital Transformation. 

One of ODG’s clients approached them to do immediate scaling and digital maturity for their platforms and CRM systems to meet rising customer and distributor demands. With the help of ODG’s full-stack net developers, salesforce developers and administrators, data analysts, data engineers, and Quality Assurance (QA) analysts, the projects achieved scale velocity in 12 weeks. In one year, ODG completed this entire endeavor.

What Are Steps You Can Also Take in the Development and Support of Digital Platforms?

ODG’s team of tech professionals had specific tasks to perform for the client’s digital platforms to be scaled adequately, and understanding the platform’s components was just the start.

These steps focus on specific components of the platform and also call for skills needed to push the platform toward digital maturity. Here are the steps the ODG team took:

1. 1. QA process implementation. Just so there are clear guidelines on what the final product should be, a QA process was created. Identifying QA guidelines gave the team an idea of needed end goals to ensure that the platform has reached an appropriate scale level. The implementation of this process also helped in minimizing additional rework to make solutions more efficient.

1. 2. Full stack development and unit testing. This is software development that encompasses all layers of the platform, from user experience to data. The ODG team utilized several software in developing the client’s platforms, mainly: Confluence, Jira, .Net, Selenium, and SQL Server.

Scaling platforms to take on more sophisticated processes meant utilizing extensive data analysis and making connections from front to back end. Unit testing, on the other hand, is the testing of individual units or components of a platform to see how compliant they are to desired results and to catch any errors or bugs.

1. 3. Platform testing. In the case of ODG’s client, they also needed help with scaling their CRM systems. To allow testing of the platform, Salesforce was used to look into the function of the platform. They specifically looked into the platform’s ability to manage activity, consumer information, and distributor needs. Testing will vary from one platform to another, and so is the level of digital transformation needed.

1. 4. Data engineering. A system for collecting and analysing data is integral in monitoring the platforms’ performance moving forward. Since changes in platform infrastructures and other innovations are expected, a keen system for gathering quality data will help in keeping track of how else a platform needs to be scaled in the future. Data consolidation is key in future-proofing a digital platform.

Related reading: Massive Data Consolidation Project for State Government 

Everyone knows how fast the online world changes. There is a constant search for how processes can be improved or how digital services can be made efficient. The development and support of digital platforms will continue to be a means of keeping up with such demands. This also means the knowledge and expertise of tech professionals like you will always be needed, so keep your skills up to date.

Find your next opportunity through us. Contact On-Demand Group now.

References:

1 Pscheid, Julian. “How to build a digital product platform for scale.” Emerge. https://www.emergeinteractive.com/insights/detail/product-platform-strategy-app-scale/. Published last May 23, 2022. Accessed last February 8, 2023.

2 Hesterberg, Karla. “The 25 Dominating Web Design Trends for 2023.” Hubspot. https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/web-design-trends-2017. Published last January 31, 2023. Accessed last February 8, 2023.

3 Malik, Priyanka. “How to Achieve Digital Maturity in 2023 (+Models, Challenges)” https://whatfix.com/blog/digital-maturity/. WhatFix. Published last May 12, 2022. Accessed last February 8, 2023.