This pattern relies on the ability to turn existing products or services into digital variants, and thus offer advantages over tangible products, e.g., easier and faster distribution. Ideally, the digitization of a product or service is realized without harnessing the value proposition which is offered to the customer. In other words: efficiency and multiplication by means of digitization does not reduce the perceived customer value.
How they do it: Amazon’s first product category was books. The value proposition of having an online book store is the possibility to offer the customer a greater choice than any book store.
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How they do it: LinkedIn brought the possibility to network and search for relevant industry contacts to the internet. Through the LinkedIn network, users can communicate with potential business partners and identify new leads for collaborations, sales and recruiting. This allows reaching-out beyond your immediate physical reach or relying on trade fairs to meet potential new business partners.
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How they do it: SAP pioneered ERP software, the integrated management of core business processes via software. Historically, ERP processes – such as finance, accounting, payroll or CRM-related processes – were done manually. With the advent of computing, SAP signed its first client in 1972, a German chemical company, for which it developed cutting-edge mainframe programs for payroll and accounting.
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How they do it: One specific area, in which Google is pushing its digitization efforts is books. The service Google books allows to search the full text of books and magazines Google has scanned and converted to text using optical character recognition.
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How they do it: Skype is gradually replacing the traditional telecom market, and replacing it with its digital alternative. In 2014, Skype’s traffic was almost 40% the size of the entire conventional international telecom market — that is, for every ten minutes spent making international phone calls on every mobile and landline network in the entire world, four minutes are spent on Skype.
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Below, the top industries for the pattern "Digitization" are displayed, in order to get insights into how this pattern is applied across different industries. We've collected data from 5 firms using this pattern.
Below, the pattern "Digitization" is analyzed based on co-occurrence, in order to get insights into how this business model pattern is applied in combination with other patterns within the firms we studied.
