What do people mean by digital operations?

In a business context, the word operations does a lot of work. At its broadest, operations can cover everything from how materials are sourced and consumed to how finances are handled, HR, sales, marketing, IT, strategy, and more. That’s a comically large number of fields.

I focus on something referred to as digital operations—using digital tools and platforms to streamline and enhance your team’s efforts, making your operations more efficient.

“But these tools are supposed to make my life easier and solve my team’s problems,” you might say. “Why do I need help defining how we use them?”

I’m glad you asked.

Tools — physical ones like hammers or digital ones like CRMs — are just tools. You can use them to amplify your natural abilities or use them haphazardly for minimal gain. Digital operations experts will sit with you and your team to learn how you work and identify your strengths, challenges, and goals. They will then pair the best tools and practices to help you meet those objectives — ideally helping you become more than the sum of your parts.

Simply transitioning your current ways of working to a new platform or tool generally doesn’t reap the benefits most people expect. Digital operations experts (like me!) are here to help you and your team make the best decisions around processes and tooling so you can make the most of your time and money.