Digital Scientists, a software innovation lab specializing in web design and app development, is excited to announce the opening of a Greenville, South Carolina location. The lab has set up shop at the renowned NEXT Innovation Center, the center for digital progress in Greenville.

“We’ve been working with South Carolina clients for years from our office here in Atlanta,” explains Digital Scientists’ CEO, Bob Klein, “but we really couldn’t be more excited to finally have a local office space in Greenville.” The company had previously been run exclusively out of its headquarters in downtown Alpharetta, GA, and nearby Atlanta office on Peachtree Road.

Digital Scientists leverages the latest technologies to quickly, holistically build platforms and products to suit its clients’ needs. Services offered include web design, app development, and custom software for e-commerce programs. “Our mobile app developers are truly some of the best in the business” says Klein. “They love to partner with our clients to hypothesize, analyze, and experiment on new technologies to better serve their businesses.”

The firm works in dozens of industries for business of various size including Hubbell Power Systems, Office Depot, and Thompson Reuters. “Our customers see us as one of the most innovative software development companies in the Atlanta area,” says Klein. “We take that responsibility seriously. We’re so much more than just a web development operation and we’re looking forward to bringing our specific expertise to the Carolinas.”

Digital Scientists aims to be a full-service digital services provider for businesses both large and small. In addition to initial strategy and marketing planning, the firm designs and implements a full range of electronic solutions. From dashboard reporting sites to responsive mobile apps to the Internet-of-Things, clients turn to Digital Scientists for a wide array of specialties.

“We’ve really honed in on a system that works for us,” explains Klein. “Our process is intentional and our team is very engaged, and we think that results in better, faster, smarter work for our clients.”

Digital Scientists is one of the nimblest new product development firms in greater Atlanta. The team consists of developers, analysts, and product specialists who work to create user-centric technology. Established in 2007, the firm operates out of offices in Atlanta, Alpharetta, and Greenville, SC.

For more information on the services available from Digital Scientists or to see recent work, email hello@digitalscientists.com or visit www.DigitalScientists.com.

This press release was originally shared by ClickReady Marketing – March 2017.

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In the late 1990s, WebVan was going to transform the grocery business through online ordering and home delivery. But just a few years after being founded (and $1 billion in infrastructure investments) the company was bankrupt.

What happened?

A lot of mistakes were made. The case could be made that WebVan was simply too far ahead of its time. Given the popularity of online grocery ordering, pickup and even delivery today, it seems likely that WebVan paid a penalty for being too early.

But their biggest mistake was that they fell in love with their idea. Then they worked hard to make that idea a reality. A lot of really smart people held meetings and set budgets and timelines and executed their plans. They spent a tremendous amount of time and resources to pushing the idea forward and into the marketplace.

But there was something they didn’t do. They didn’t take the time to understand the market and the customer problem they were trying to solve. They didn’t test their product and validate their idea. They failed to realize that the market wasn’t quite ready for online grocery shopping. They created a well-developed product that failed to create enough interest to make it commercially viable.

Simply, they didn’t find the Product/Market Fit.

What is the Product/Market Fit?

In its time, WebVan was a cool idea. At the time, internet retailing was beginning to take shape, and WebVan wanted to do for groceries what Amazon was doing for books. It seemed like a cool idea, since people bought groceries far more frequently than books, and it had the potential to save people hours every week.

WebVan was built on its coolness. They wanted to find out if they could build a new business model. They never asked if they should.

When it comes down to it, people don’t care about coolness. They care about their needs and their problems. If a product or a company can solve their problems in a compelling way that they’re willing to pay for, that’s what’s cool.

That, in essence, is what Product/Market Fit is. Understanding the customer problem that needs to be solved, understanding the marketplace and people’s willingness to pay for a solution, and testing the product to find the right approach that can then be scaled. You know when you have Product/Market Fit when you start to see user adoption.

It’s asking, “Should we built it?” instead of “Could we build it?”

Had WebVan determined their Product/Market Fit before they scaled their operation with massive infrastructure investments, they would have seen their planned approach was doomed to fail. And they also might have pivoted to an approach that would have worked.

Maybe they would have uncovered some aspect of grocery shopping that annoyed shoppers or identified a certain segment of the market that was open to their service. Then they could have built their business accordingly.

It’s easy to look at the Dark Ages of 20 years ago and marvel at how foolish we all were. But companies of today are not immune to the same mistakes WebVan made.

The smartphone has spurred a digital revolution of which we’re still only seeing the beginning. Mobile technology has made it possible for users to be able to consume media, share content, interact with others, and purchase nearly anything from a convenient, handheld device. This has given rise to companies like Uber, Airbnb, and many others who continually raise the bar for functionality and user experience.

Entrepreneurs and Fortune 500 companies alike are bent on becoming the next Uber, disrupting industries or creating new ones. With so much energy and creativity and desire in the marketplace, and consumer expectations on the rise, there is a great deal at stake. This has made the fundamentals — Product/Market Fit — more important than ever.

How to find your product/market fit

Finding Product/Market Fit is the process of stepping back from your idea, understanding the customer problem you’re trying to solve, understanding the market’s desire for a solution, and testing prototypes to validate your ideas (or invalidate them and adjusting them).

It’s simple in concept, but requires discipline. It seems counterintuitive at times, and requires a decidedly unconventional approach compared to what most executives are used to. But it’s the best way to arrive at a product that is truly innovative and will be embraced by the market. If nothing else, it helps you avoid investing huge sums of money in something that will never work.

In future articles, we’ll discuss specific methods for finding your Product/Market Fit. But here are four basic principles that can guide you as you embark on this journey:

Don’t trust your own ideas

At Digital Scientists, we don’t trust our own ideas, nor do we trust our clients’ ideas. Why? While some of us may be a good fit for the product (we love using mobile apps as much as we love designing them), we’re too close to the product and too small as a group to give an accurate representation of the market. Customers, or the market, make the decision of whether your product will appeal to a large audience. And the market is always right.

Instead of getting too enamored with your ideas, find out what the market wants. Find a problem that’s not being solved in a satisfactory way. Let the market pull the product out of you, instead of pushing it out.

A key part of this is understanding the size of the market. How many people are suffering from the problem you’re trying to solve. It may seem obvious, but it’s a key piece of information in building a sustainable business, and it’s often missed.

This requires looking at the big picture, taking several steps back and asking “why” repeatedly, until you find the root cause of the customer problem. It’s not easy, and it might require some outside perspective, but it’s the most important step.

Validate, learn, repeat

Absent a clear understanding of Product/Market Fit, companies — from the largest corporations to mom & pops — will go to a designer and ask for a web site or an application. The project will get whittled down based on what functions are possible in the given time and budget.

Eventually, the application will be built, on time and on budget, and it will be deemed a success. And it will still fail. This is what happened at WebVan, on a massive, billion-dollar scale. These conventions companies follow, of setting timelines and budgets and execution plans, present artificial constraints, and they have no place in the process of innovation.

It seems counterintuitive, but the process of finding the Product/Market Fit may require you to go over budget and past your timeline. It’s an iterative process characterized by creating, testing ideas, validating (or invalidating), learning, adjusting, and repeating.

That’s because you never know what the market will tell you. It might be trying to pull a product out of you that you never imagined. Putting a timeline on it will most likely cut it short before you arrive at the solution.

While the thought of going over budget may seem frightening, remember that it will still be a fraction of going all in to launch a product that’s fully developed, but not the right fit for the market.

Launch and test an MVP

The Minimum Viable Product, or MVP, is one of the best ways to develop and launch a prototype and find the Product/Market Fit. It involves creating a product in fairly rapid fashion, complete with bugs, glitches and other problems, and unleashing it on a test market to see if it works.

That’s another frightening thing for many entrepreneurs and executives: the idea of putting out a product that doesn’t have all of the features and functions that were initially envisioned. But what the MVP does is gets the product in the hands of potential customers quickly. That, in turn, leads to faster feedback and allows you to make adjustments quickly, and based on real-user information.

That will give you the proof you need to determine what features users truly want and will use, and move on to the next phase of development.

Build, execute, scale…or abandon

Once you have proof that the product will work and understand how the market wants it. Then your job is to execute — build, scale, market your product.

You can proceed with confidence, because by determining your Product/Market Fit, you know what your growth engine will be. You know who your customers are, what’s important to them, and how they are going to use your product.

You know this because you will have tested and adjusted, tested and adjusted, pivoted, adjusted, and tested again. You’ll know that you can and should continue to develop the product.

Or, you may not. You may not find the Product/Market Fit. The market may keep telling you, no matter what changes you make, that it doesn’t want that product. Certainly, that’s not what you want to hear, but it’s better than hearing the voice of a bankruptcy lawyer.

There are no guarantees, of course, but knowing you have found the Product/Market Fit gives you confidence. Confidence that you have the basis for a product that people will use and can be scaled, possibly to become a stand-alone business. Confidence from knowing your product enhances people’s lives through simplification, enjoyment, utility or purpose.

Confidence comes from knowing you aren’t pursuing an untested idea because the market told you it delivers real value.

The post A guide to finding product market fit appeared first on Digital Scientists.

After years of successfully leveraging technological innovation for the benefit of our greater Atlanta area clientele, we are pleased to announce that we have officially opened the doors of our first office in the Carolinas. The new office in Greenville, South Carolina marks the third outpost of our custom software firm, and we are excited to bring our skills in custom mobile app development and web design to the greater Carolina market.

Branching out of Atlanta

Physically managed from our Alpharetta and Atlanta offices for the past decade, Digital Scientists has a long history of working with well-known companies all over the Southeast and beyond. Our recent work for Hubbell Power Systems, a preeminent manufacturer of utility industry products in the Carolinas, allowed us to put our skills on display for the local area. “Hubbell needed a single way for users to see all 200,000 plus products,” explains our CEO Bob Klein. “Our team designed an application called HPS Select that allows users to search and save items on a broad scale. It’s been really popular with engineers because of its ease-of-use.”

The NEXT innovation center

The new Digital Scientists office will be operating out of Greenville’s NEXT Innovation Center, a hub for new product development firms and software development companies. Located on the Swamp Rabbit Trail in Downtown Greenville, NEXT Innovation Center offers an innovative, collaborative facility specifically designed to accelerate the growth of local startups and entrepreneurial businesses.

Of the new decision to bring our newest office to the NEXT Innovation Center, our CEO Bob Klein said, “NEXT is just a natural fit for Digital Scientists, because it’s really a hotbed for fast-growing, tech-forward companies. We find a lot of inspiration there, but it’s also just a really great facility to work in.”

Greenville and beyond

Long-term, we hope this move to Greenville will better serve clients in South Carolina and beyond. “Our work is inherently personal, so we really believe in the power of the face-to-face meeting,” says Klein. “This office is just going to make it simpler and easier for us to do that with our clients in the Carolinas.”

Ready to start your new project? Contact us.

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What’s a Software Innovation Lab?

When we’re out at parties, community gatherings or networking events and tell people our name is Digital Scientists, the question we get is, “What does your company do?”

“We’re a software innovation lab,” is our reply. What follows is either a wisecrack involving some combination of lab coats, petri dishes and Bunsen burners, or a blank, perplexed stare.

“A what-now?”

It’s tempting to just call ourselves a web development shop, but that doesn’t begin to describe our capabilities. Our clients often look to us for product development, or even business development, like they would a skunk works or an innovation center. We help our clients create solutions to specific market needs.

We realize Software Innovation Lab is not a commonly used term, but the way we operate is like a true lab in both spirit and function. It’s really the most apt description of what we do: apply the scientific method to create innovative digital products that provide superior user experiences. Those digital products solve clients’ problems, leverage new market opportunities, and even build new businesses.

There wasn’t really a good term to describe what we do, and more importantly how we do it, so we started using Software Innovation Lab. To best understand our approach, it helps to break the term into its three parts.

Software

In 2011, Marc Andreessen famously wrote that “software is eating the world.” What it means is that every company is essentially a software company.

Or at least they should be.

People are experiencing the world through digital platforms, websites, and applications. Computers and more importantly mobile devices are giving people access to media, information and experiences at unprecedented levels and in exciting new ways.

It’s not just limited to computers, tablets, and phones. The Internet of Things (IoT) trend has opened a new world of digitally driven experiences.

Window blinds automatically open and close based on the position of the sun. Thermostats adjust the temperature according to who’s home. Refrigerators, ovens, and other products once considered low-tech (internet-connected crock pots are a thing now) offer seamless, digitally connected experiences.

Of course, software has also had a dramatic effect on how people buy products and services. Almost without exception, the customer journey involves several digital touchpoints. Often, the customer journey takes place entirely within the digital realm. Sometimes, the digital experience is the product.

So to put it mildly, software is really important to how customers view, experience, and perceive products, brands and companies. And that’s not just true of young industries born in the digital age. Even century-old industries are being driven by the demand for digital experiences.

Prior to 2010, getting a taxi was a profoundly analog (not to mention frustrating and inefficient) process. Now it’s sublimely and irreversibly digital.

So the need for software has never been greater, and every year, the bar keeps getting raised. Users expect more than just online versions of catalogs and brochures. They want experiences that not only meet their needs, but actually anticipate them, and in ways that are engaging, simple, and even fun.

To put it plainly, a company’s digital platforms need to be, well, innovative.

Innovation

Many companies’ touch points aren’t much more than conventional, analog channels like brochures and catalogs, and largely static web sites that do little more than display information for users (or customers) to consume. They miss the opportunities digital platforms provide to transform the user experience and make it better than they ever thought possible.

The ‘Innovation’ part of our approach means creating applications — not just static sites — that offer unique customer experiences that add value to the buyer journey, transform the way people interact with the company, allow them to do something they simply couldn’t before.

Mercedes-Benz USA CEO Steve Cannon has been quoted as saying, “Customer Experience is the new marketing.” Customers, he clarified, have the unfettered ability to share their experiences — positive or negative — with the world. Offering a particularly delightful experience that is organically shared by customers is one of the most effective marketing strategies a company can hope for.

With digital products, the user experience is doubly important. In his 2016 talk, “Customer Experience is the Product,” product design executive Peter Merholz discussed why the experience is so important. At every stage of its development, a digital product needs to be designed to meet a customer need or solve a problem, lest it be ignored or even publicly excoriated by customers.

Is customer experience marketing, or is it the product? We believe both to be true, because we’ve seen companies gain a competitive advantage through a superior customer experience. In fact, we’ve made it happen.

Learn More:  UI UX Design

Huddle, a digital ticketing startup, overtook a competitor with a two-year head start because of a better user experience. Multi-family real estate company Gables Residential saved over $1 million in advertising costs by streamlining customers’ digital journeys and integrating it with their interactions with leasing agents.

Creating superior customer experiences requires innovation, and that starts with understanding. We take care to understand not just what our clients want to accomplish, but why. What is the long-term vision? What is the problem the application will be designed to solve? Just as important is understanding the customer, or user, and all the possible ways they will interact with the application.

By taking this disciplined approach, we can then think differently and take the full customer journey into account. We can then think through new, unexpected ways the customer can use the application, or how an old process can be improved, or how a digital product can be fully optimized to meet and exceed user expectations.

In other words, create something that just works. Seamlessly. Intuitively. Simply.

But new apps and better digital products and experiences are just the beginning. Whole new opportunities, new business models, and even new industries are being created. Companies are creating and delivering customer value, giving them new ways to work, communicate, share, learn, be entertained, and, yes, shop, which simply weren’t possible just a few years ago.

What we do is more than build digital experiences and products. We help companies launch new businesses. That kind of innovation doesn’t just happen. We don’t randomly throw ideas around while playing foosball and drinking highly caffeinated coffee. There is a process involved.

Lab

The name Digital Scientists is more than just a catchy moniker. We chose it because our approach is grounded in the scientific method.

When biologists, chemists, geologists and other “real” scientists work, they observe, measure and experiment. They formulate hypotheses, test, and modify them until they have a working theory.

We approach the challenges our clients present to us in exactly the same way. Starting with a deep understanding of the client’s plans, the landscape, and the user (as discussed above), we hypothesize, experiment and analyze to define, launch and enhance software products.

Sometimes that means using existing solutions that we already know will work and modifying them to meet a specific need. Other times, it involves developing a completely new approach that’s never been done before.

Either way, the results are never plug-and-play, one-size-fits-all solutions. We approach every project as an opportunity to solve a problem in a new way. The only way that can happen is through a scientific process.

A lab is not a place. It’s not a spotless room with white tile floors, beakers and microscopes. A lab is a team of people.

In the traditional sense, it might be chemists and biologists. In our case, the lab is made up of designers and developers, collaborating with our clients to use software in innovative ways to create digital products that solve real problems.

Innovating the Customer Experience

The digital world is in a state of constant change. It’s evolving, growing, mutating.

At the center of it all is the customer experience, and the need for companies to continually find new and better ways to engage with their audiences. To improve and simplify the customer journey. Or to invent a completely new experience for customers.

The only way to survive in a world of constant movement is to experiment, learn and innovate to find new solutions to new problems.

So when you see any of us out at parties or events, and we start to explain that we’re a Software Innovation Lab, you know we don’t use that term because it sounds cool and edgy (although admittedly it does), but because it reflects our approach to serving our clients.

You can still crack wise about lab coats and Bunsen burners; we have a good sense of humor.

Just don’t call us a marketing agency or a “web development shop.”

In need of a Software Innovation Lab?  Let’s talk.

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To summarize, we’ve included a video of our experiences.

Additional reading:
* Lamar RoadNinja project – in partnership with AT&T Drive Studio
* TESLA Master Plan, Part Deux
* Machine Learning

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Social Media is a lot like the old media, for example TV, in one very important way. It’s almost impossible to measure its value using ROI – return on investment.

Just in case you were wondering, most TV advertisements don’t have an attractive ROI.

So, why does anyone invest in TV advertising – by extension – why should anyone invest marketing dollars into social media?

Well, when it comes to TV, you’ll find that even though TV ads don’t earn a great return, sales will fall when the ads stop.

Huh?

The point here is that ROI is a relatively short term metric. Just because I’m investing today, doesn’t mean that I’m going to be able to capture the revenue in this quarter. Or next. Or even this year.

Same goes for social media. As you build a rapport with prospects and customers, you aren’t just in there for a quick ROI, you’re really supporting your current baseline in sales.

So, here’s where Customer Referral Value (PDF) comes in handy. If you’re a savvy brand builder, your Lifetime Customer Value should already be something you’re thinking about. Just like it sounds – it represents that actual lifetime value of a customer. If you want to get into the financial geekery of it all, it essentially represents the discounted value of all future profits from a particular customer.

And, might I add, not all customers are created equal. Okay, maybe they’re created equal, but they’re not all of equal value. Some will be promiscuous and cheat on your brand while some will be buying the brand for the long haul.

Here’s a simple overview of how to calculate Lifetime Customer Value (“LCV”) –

I’ve highlighted one key element that will be your secret weapon for figuring out what all of these Facebook friends and Twitter followers are actually worth.

A customer’s total value to your brand isn’t just what the customer buys. It’s also how much business the customer refers to you (over a lifetime).

When it comes to figuring out what the next Twitter follower or the next Facebook friend is work, start by thinking about the power of social media to drive Customer Referral Value.

When we work with clients on Conversion Optimization, we’ll often put this measurement to work to ensure that we’re optimizing both for next quarter and for the long haul.

You can learn more about Customer Referral Value in Managing Customers For Profit: Strategies to Increase Profits and Build Loyalty or contact us about how we can help you with Conversion Optimization.

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We thought it would be fun to put together a quick video of the building’s progression. You may not be able to tell, but 21 S. Main St. is over 150 years old. We don’t think she looks a day over 100, but of course, we’ve put a lot of TLC in this renovation.

To create this video, we used an animation tool called Animoto. It’s a great way to create jazzy photo flip-books and more fun than just linking to our Flickr page.

Stay tuned for a full post about the opening.

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Please consider the environment before printing this blog post.

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Of course, iTunes is the most universally adopted music, video, and application platform in the world. We were super psyched to see the Mission Zero iPhone App (designed and developed by the digital scientists team) front and center on the iTunes store.

You can’t pay for advertising like this. We know, because we would have done it… if we could afford it.

All kidding aside, we are honored to be a part of the Mission Zero project and take great pride in the recognition bestowed by iTunes. We hope that this exposes Mission Zero and the Mission Zero iPhone App to a whole new audience.

P.S. Speaking of iLove – couldn’t resist throwing in this image of the guys playing with their iPhones. What you don’t see are the other 10 scientists who were doing exactly the same thing at the same time.

iPhone = stealth office pictures

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