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Digital business ecosystem

Written by Ana Canteli on November 22, 2018

A digital ecosystem is an environment of digital platforms that together achieve a single purpose: to generate qualified traffic; convert visits into leads, leads into clients and/or subscribers.

It serves organizations to position their products and services in the digital world where artificial intelligence as a disruptive technology is becoming more important. And control all aspects of their message throughout the life cycle of the client.

It is no longer enough to have a website with its respective privacy policy (legal notice and cookie policy) and be present in social networks to say that we participate in the online environment. We need to create a complete digital ecosystem within artificial intelligence business models applied, because the environments in which that companies relate to their customers have become more complex.

Having your company on the Internet is a valid option for your brand image to gain visibility. The digital ecosystem of an organization allows to keep in mind its portfolio of products and services in all platforms where its clients are located; to show them access to your website in business models where they can get more information about your company, contact you, make purchases, while the organization fulfils its obligations regarding the privacy policy etc.

The OpenKM document management system helps the organization to create and implement an orderly digital ecosystem into the digital transformation business models. Thanks to the KCenter platform, the organization can create web customizations, in which the target audience gets what they want and need from the digital economy.

The use of the concept of an ecosystem is very suitable in this context of digital transformation environment since it defines a system composed of several organisms. OpenKM thanks to the SDK's in JAVA, PHP and .NET guarantees the integration of the document management software with the rest of applications and systems that make up the suite of programs of the company. Something that contributes to the better coordination of efforts by staff, improves the performance of digital transformation strategies and creates synergies through the integration of various technologies, tools and digital marketing platforms.

The digital ecosystem is the foundation of the marketing strategy that continues to drive the most effective and least expensive investment, in business marketing. And it is the most favourable for the development of a project on the Internet:

• The initial costs of a business on the Internet are lower than if we opted for the offline version.
• The Internet offers digital marketing tools in continuous progress - artificial intelligence -, to get to your customers.
• It is relatively easy to expand to international markets with the same platform: your website. The website is the axis of all digital marketing strategies, where everything culminates.
• Any online action is susceptible to be measurable, which provides an exhaustive control of the business march. The metrics provide the vision of your digital asset. A platform on which the different indicators are drawn. They help to make decisions about the direction of the strategies with a clear vision. Something fundamental for digital marketing.
• The Internet offers a multitude of resources to increase the visibility of the web and increase the number of conversions.

Elements of the digital ecosystem

•  The website is the centre of your digital ecosystem, where users can get to know you and where you will centralize all online conversions. The microsites are individual websites that extend the functionality of a primary web, allowing to complete its content. SEO is the set of online marketing techniques, which allows you to position your web pages in search engines organically.
• The brand strategy or brand identity is what defines the spirit of the brand. It is the intellectual expression of the ecosystem and a fundamental part, to carry the message through all its channels.
• The contact with the target audience and interested parties occurs through emails, contact forms, lead nurturing - marketing technique aimed at education or maturing of leads and loyalty of current customers, to achieve a defined goal; as the purchase of a product or service. In the case of current clients, enhance their evolution within the portfolio of goods and services -. Sending personalized emails serves to make your customers loyal and feel valued.
• To grow, the organization must invest intelligently in digital and social media. Search engines and optimized content, which is what allows the system to evolve and grow. The SEM allows you to carry out online advertising campaigns in search engines and display network to attract traffic to your website. And landing pages allow you to communicate a special campaign through a landing website where you can convert your visitors into leads for your company.
• The blog could be considered as the heart of the brand. With contents in perpetuity in the search engine, and that keep the ecosystem alive. Work on content marketing by publishing value publications, useful for your target audience. Social networks facilitate direct contact with customers, generating opportunities to improve processes. It also helps you gain web visibility and generate social traffic.

The web-based OpenKM content management system allows you to create customized websites, which are managed by the Administrator. This, in turn, can use the same platform to facilitate the coordination, communication and organization of the different units of the company: marketing, sales, finance, accounting, etc. From the web site based on OpenKM open source technology, visitors to our website can become leads by filling out the contact form on the page. This information can be collected in the form of a record (OpenKM is, in fact, a document and electronic records management system) that is the subject of a business process. The document management system incorporates Smartasks, which speed up the execution of processes and guarantees compliance with them. Well, the document management software can collect the record and send it to the customer service department. There, the sales staff access a customized view of the document management system or CRM, in which they perform the department's own tasks. But this is not all.

A digital ecosystem is composed of objectives, channels, tools and platforms that are interconnected at the functional level.

SMART is a methodology that allows us to define an effective objective without forgetting essential elements:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time-bound (on Time)

For example: Achieve an increase of X% in the traffic received by the website, each month and receive n requests from potential customers, captured through the web in the same period of time.

It is a specific objective, measurable, achievable (since it would be a realistic objective); relevant to the company since it would help you to meet your goals and to perform within a certain period of time.

In the digital ecosystem, it is vital to define what image the company wants to generate, what are the attributes of the brand, its mission and vision in digital channels.

From OpenKM the organization can create ad-hoc content for each digital communication channel because they all differ in their characteristics, language styles and interaction proposals.

When a user creates content in OpenKM, you can subscribe to it. Thus, while sharing it with other members of the department, you can be informed of the changes made by other people. These changes are managed through version control, which allows access to different versions of the available file, download them and even see the contributions of each author.

In the Security tab, linked to the content, we can decide which users or groups of users have access to the document and with what privileges; edit, delete, download, etc. In the documentation of the document management system, the administrator will see that they can customize the security management of the contents. If the content is linked to other files in OpenKM, the user can define that relationship (equivalent, parent-child, or group).

It is also possible to carry out an exhaustive control over all events that have taken place on the document through the Activity Log. This section allows a complete audit of the document while complying with the most demanding requirements of the privacy policy since only users with responsibility in the organization can access this information.

In OpenKM, users can add more information to digital content in the form of metadata; in the Wiki section, you can inform about the sources and resources used to create the content and if you have any questions or suggestions to make, in the Forum section you will have a discussion space linked to the document. In addition, OpenKM offers an online chat to hold online conversations.

Strategies

According to the objectives of the company, the strategies will be more or less focused on certain channels and actions. You can develop positioning strategies in search engines, communication strategies in social networks. Marketing based on inbound marketing content, activities in the field of public relations, usability induced to examine web browsing, optimizing the user experience to create a better navigation on your web etc ...

Thanks to the OpenKM SDKs, the document manager can act as a front-end or back-end integrating with other tools. The Reports functionality of the document management system, allows us to analyze any event, in large volumes of information - big data - for the organization and thus determine its effectiveness.

Implementation, measurement and monitoring tools

The main objective of companies is to convert web visitors into customers and therefore, increase sales in online stores. But to achieve this, it is necessary to use new tools.
Fortunately, in this fight to get attention to increase sales, we have different applications. The use of lead management, or CRM, is fundamental to achieve this goal. With this platform, it is possible to manage the commercial aspect, marketing, after-sales service and customer service in a united way. OpenKM has created a CRM thanks to the SDK in PHP. It is a document management customization that allows the sales department to use the system's features at the service of their business processes. This is something that the organization can do for any entity that is part of the company.

Everything necessary to create a digital ecosystem for the company is present in the OpenKM document management system that together with its complete API, documentation and extra applications, provides all the tools for the implementation of a solid digital ecosystem. Functionalities such as activity log, reports and activity indicators at the user and general level allow, together with the integration tools that it includes, the ideal digital environment to measure the effects of all aspects of the company's digital strategy.

In addition, OpenKM provides a task manager that facilitates the coordination of several actors involved in the same project. The same as the workflow. OpenKM offers a workflow engine that allows defining the most complex processes. For example, when a user creates a content to publish on the blog or social networks, by changing a metadata - from pending to completed - this can trigger an approval workflow, assigning the new content to the person in charge, who can decide if the content is published or if it needs to be improved.