Product Delivery in the Digital Age

Product delivery is central to every business. However, as businesses evolve with new technology and processes, so does how they deliver products. Product delivery has moved past traditional methods in today's digital age, now allowing some products, such as digital assets, to be delivered nearly immediately. But, what is digital product delivery, and how does it differ from traditional methods? Here’s what businesses should keep in mind.

Traditional vs. Digital Product Delivery

What’s the difference between traditional and digital product delivery? It comes down to digital versus tangible goods. 

Traditional product delivery is shipping or selling tangible goods to customers—items like furniture, clothing, and electronics. Customers order the products, which are shipped to their home or business. Traditional product delivery is typically quite expensive (a cost that either is absorbed by the business or passed on to customers) and takes time. Technological advances like drones and machine learning have allowed for faster delivery, but even Amazon’s fleet of planes, trucks, and cars can take days to deliver a product. 

Digital product delivery is delivering intangible products to customers, like software, ebooks, or digital subscriptions. Because there is no physical item to ship, these items are delivered instantly through web access or download. Digital delivery limits the types of products that can be sent and accessed, but it has significantly lower delivery costs. 

One of the greatest benefits of businesses creating and selling digital products is that those products can easily be scaled without dealing with manufacturing or shipping logistics. For customers, the biggest draw is instant access to digital assets.

Combining the Merits of Digital Transformation and Product Delivery

Digital transformation is everywhere, from automating workflows to revamping traditional product delivery, and is now a requirement for modern businesses. Studies show that 89% of companies (and growing) already have a digital transformation underway. 

Digital transformation has paved the way for digital product delivery and improved traditional product delivery by smoothing out and automating tasks on the backend. This is, perhaps, one of its most overlooked impacts. The true effects are clear when looking at statistics: There has been a 70% increase in digital product purchases in the past two years, all thanks to businesses’ digital transformations. Successful digital transformations re-think how companies use technology. It’s not just about adopting the newest technology but integrating digital solutions into workflows and processes. The same is true for updating traditional product delivery: Digital transformation requires rethinking the entire process with a digital focus, not just changing one aspect of the workflow. 

Here are some of the ways digital transformation impacts product delivery:

• Scalability. Digital transformation involves incorporating digital tools into every aspect of processes and workflows, which boosts efficiency. Combined with digital product delivery, businesses can scale their products more rapidly because they aren’t limited by physical supplies, manufacturing, and shipping. 

• Faster payments. The expansion of electronic devices makes it faster and easier to process payments. Faster online payments open the door to more digital product customers and make it easier for businesses to get digital products to customers faster. 

• Speed to market. One of the main benefits of digital transformation is increased speed and automation. Adopting a digital-first culture allows companies to get their products to market faster, especially through digital delivery.

Digital Delivery Case Studies

What does digital product delivery look like in action? We’re surrounded by it every day, and many businesses have successfully switched to digital products or added them to traditional product delivery. 

Here are three examples of successful digital product deliveries:

1. Udemy

Udemy has a library of thousands of professional and personal development classes on a wide range of topics for users to learn new or expand on current skills. For a monthly fee, customers gain access to a massive digital library and can search and start classes instantly. Digital classes and online course offerings make it easy for customers to test different courses to find the right fit and allow Udemy to expand its course library quickly as needs change.

2. Audible 

Audible is a massive retailer of audiobooks, many of which users can listen to for free. Customers can browse the library, which is integrated with Amazon, and pay a subscription fee to listen to unlimited titles. They can also buy a book outright with a one-time fee, instantly downloading and listening to it through the app. 

3. Under Armour

Fitness apparel and gear company Under Armour has long followed traditional product delivery but recently expanded to digital delivery when it acquired digital fitness companies MyFitness Pal and MapMyFitness. Users can improve their fitness and build a connection with Under Armor, and digital product delivery gives them easy access to all app features. Under Armour blurs the line between digital and traditional delivery by using app data to recommend shoes and apparel to customers and boost the customer experience. 

Digital product delivery is meant for the digital age. With expanding digital transformation, companies can re-think how they deliver products and tap into new benefits for their products and services.