Digital Platforms are a key component of a corporation's digital transformation, creating an online space for transactions and interaction between a business and consumers. There are several different types of platforms, including social media platforms, service platforms, and media sharing platforms. The type of platform used depends on the desired outcome of the digital business.

The social media platform operating model is based on user interaction and advertising sales. Service platforms accelerate digital transformation by offering single-click access to products or services. Media sharing platform strategy involves a business model of offering data-driven advertising and web browser real estate.

The key requirements of a successful platform include high levels of security for both customers and the business, promoting interaction between the business and consumers, the ability to scale with the ongoing digital progression, and providing value for those accessing the platform. Usability and visual appeal are also driving forces behind digital platforms. Utilizing application programming interfaces (APIs) can further expand a corporation's ecosystem with strategic choices for platform usage.

The power of platforms comes from the competitive advantage of integrated analytics and personalized solutions. Each digital platform enhances user interactions by creating its own set of rules, including rules for how much advertising revenue is allowed, rules for managing content and suppliers, and rules regarding user relationships. Digital platforms can address issues with extensive vendor management workflows, labor-intensive processes for publishing metadata, a lack of distribution platforms, extended product launch times, legacy platforms without self-service capabilities, poor customer experiences due to complex front-end systems, and increasing operational costs due to manual back-end operation.

Digital platforms can address these issues by realizing non-linear content distribution, establishing custom services-based applications, streamlining workflow management, increasing agility when defining digital assets and media formats, presenting a unified platform that rationalizes front-end systems for the customer, providing integrated analytics, and designing responsive, personalized support solutions.

What are the business benefits of digital platforms?

Enabling web operations to publish real-time content expedites time-to-market with a consistent, unified digital experience.
Streamlining and improving the user experience is easier with dynamic web content that supports advertising and provides frictionless interactions.
Improve competitive intelligence, brand visibility, marketing effectiveness, and viewership with personalized, relevant advertising and promotions.
Digital platforms empower rapid innovation. Significantly reduce the time it takes to launch new products by automating and streamlining workflow processes and implementing custom rules for testing and usage.
Digital platforms can increase self-service functionality for customer inquiries and automate some backend operations, relieving some of your employees' valuable time and mental bandwidth.
Customer experience and satisfaction improve exponentially on high-value digital platforms, leading to increased viewership.
Standardization of the cloud and the newest innovative technologies means the most effective technology stack for workflow optimization and elastic infrastructure.
Digital platforms provide reliable recording, monitoring, and forecasting functionality, helping users to identify substandard operating conditions and adjust accordingly.
Managing web experiences and mobile experiences from a single, unified interface can increase authoring efficiency.
Digital platforms create opportunities for new, inventive business models by differentiating business functionalities and evaluating several business models in various marketplaces.