It’s really easy to launch powerful digital solutions. Technology is amazing and it’s always getting better. If you’ve already got a retail store, it’s quick and easy to launch an online store, integrate it with a better and simpler online POS and run your finances in the cloud. Soon after that you can broadcast SMS reminders every time a product ships, automatically email offers to customers who abandon their online orders, and run a mini version of your store within facebook. Companies like Shopify, Vend and Xero have made all of this really easy. We’ve used these solutions and they’re awesome.

Here’s the thing. It’s not about the technology. It’s too easy to put this stuff together and deploy a powerful, integrated, cloud-based system. The technical questions are answered. The best questions to ask are about customers. Who is the target market? Where are they? What do they want to buy? What do we know they’re looking for? Where are they buying it? How do they find it? Where do they go for advice and who do they listen to? How would they prefer to buy? Who would they prefer to listen to?

Answer these questions, and more, and bake the answers into the solution from day one. If you ask the right questions and do the right planning you can predict what people will buy tomorrow. Do this right and you will sell it to them tomorrow. This is the hard part. Check out this video to see just how easy the technology is.