For you inquisitive folk, we’re glad you asked! A dark horse is one who may not have the odds in their favour but still have a chance to win the race. Dark horse businesses face challenges and competition, often through the digital space. Digital-first companies like Amazon, Uber and Facebook continue to swallow market share by their offerings of convenience, leaving brick and mortar businesses behind, no matter how well established they were. They were once the dark horse, but quickly grew to take the lead in disrupting many industries and businesses.
At Darkhorse Solutions, we want to give native non-digital businesses a level playing field – to compete using digital or other innovative methods. The platforms offered by digital-native companies can also be harnessed by small and medium businesses to digitalize product offerings or transform the strategy to attract more customers using digital tools. Our goal is to give that digital boost to companies who want to grow but are not quite sure how to compete.
Social media gurus and business coaches almost always use examples of past success and explain that their “model has worked for thousands of other people” and to “trust the process” only for you to find that it’s going too slow or it’s too much work in addition to keeping the lights on in your business. This might make you question your time and probably cost investment. But the truth is, some of them are right! With new technology being released every day, if you are not using digital means that are suited to your growth, your business is very unlikely to be leading the race.
How Can I Start Leading the Race?
Digital transformation consulting is a steadily growing industry skillset. Many of the major consulting firms (Deloitte, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, IBM, McKinsey, etc.) hire and train digital transformation consultants, who examine your business model and sell advice on optimizing your cost and revenue models based on industry best practices. As a business owner, this would be a step in the right direction. But the downside of going with large firms is the engagement is often short term or project focused, run as a project based on you as the client – and of course, they come with an expensive price tag!
As part of an industry leading organization looking to digitally transform, I too have experienced these engagements with external consultants but found that their focus was more on project management and best practices rather than understanding our goals in the business. It was only by collaborating and getting constructive feedback from our customers that we were able to build a strategy that brought us new and long term business value.
Our team at Darkhorse Solutions has a skillset crossing digital technology, process analysis, data science and financial analysis. We have studied digital transformations from organizations large and small and are constantly updating our knowledge of new technology coming to the world. We combine our past experience, current skills and passion for future technology to paint the big picture digital landscape and overlay your company’s strengths. Our goal is to deliver a holistic strategy and execution plan that suits your needs. More importantly, we take an empathetic approach by focusing on the needs of your customers and employees. Your customers are the most important piece of growing your business and help determine your strategy – while your employees are the key to executing your strategy. Having both perspectives truly carries your business to the next level!
We can give you a boost in the race by learning about your business model and offering a custom strategic plan that suits your situation. Sometimes a simple solution is best so that you get results quickly – we then look to scale the successful initiatives to get sustainable value. And if there are new ways you could be growing your business, we’ll explore those too and give you our honest feedback through data and analysis. Whether you choose to work with us or not, we wish you all the best and look forward to seeing you ahead of the race!
