Do You Have, Manage, or Plan to Create a Digital Project or Company?
Hello! My name is Ruymán Borges Rodríguez. I have been a digital mentor for small business owners, served as CTO for two digital projects over several years, and acted as the technology liaison between the offline and online divisions of several companies now generating seven-figure annual revenues (in euros), such as Dormitorum and Modular Vivendi. I am currently co-founder of a tourism startup set to launch soon, and I continue to manage my own digital assets.
Let me show you how I’ve enabled digital—and not-so-digital—projects to leverage technology and the cloud for success.
Let’s get started!
What Does a Digital Project Need?
A few years ago, someone said, “From now on, every company is a technology company, whether they know it or not.” What they meant was that, like it or not, your business uses some form of technology, directly or indirectly—whether you’re engaging customers through social media and digital marketing, managing inventory with software, or something else entirely.
Knowing that technology is a tool you can leverage… have you examined all the areas of technology that could benefit your business model?
If You Answered “Yes”
- Are you maximizing each of these areas?
- Do you monitor them?
- How much time do you dedicate to them?
- Do you follow an established schedule?
- Which tools do you use?
These and many other questions should have clear answers that you know and control.
If You Answered “No”
Then you’re missing out on all the advantages that have emerged over the past two decades—advantages your competitors (especially the most successful ones) are already exploiting, sometimes directly against you.
Information is power; misinformation is a winding, random road with an unknown destination. Don’t be a weather vane in the wind. Hoist a “technological sail” and seize the helm of your business. Choose your destination. Become a digital captain.
If you’re in the “No” camp, don’t worry—through this series of posts on my blog, I will guide you on the digital discovery journey you need to progress (or survive) in this digital world. As you already know, every business is a technology company, whether its owners realize it or not.
What Is a Microservice?
In software terms, a microservice is, in plain language, a function (or set of functions) that returns a value important to the company, service, or application that invokes it. Generally, it processes a segment of code that’s vital for the complete puzzle to fit together. For example, if you have a web application that sends messages, those messages typically go through an email-sending microservice. The same applies to contact form submissions on your website: how does your application handle them? Where are they sent? Which protocols are used? Where is it configured? What happens if an email doesn’t arrive or lands in the spam folder?
Each microservice can raise dozens of questions—but I won’t delve into that here. I simply want you to know that ALL internet applications use microservices to some extent. Essentially, the internet is a network of interconnected services and microservices. When a service focuses on a single task, it earns the “micro” prefix—usually a sign that the developer followed best practices used by professional or veteran programmers. You may also encounter monolithic services that handle many tasks; if well-designed, they’re effectively a LEGO set composed of multiple microservices.
Why Microservices Matter
Why am I making such a fuss about microservices? Because they matter—a lot. They ensure that programs, tasks, and complex functionalities are handled in separate threads, unaffected by the availability or load of other microservices.
Imagine that when you take photos on your smartphone, they’re uploaded to a cloud folder. The upload itself is handled by a microservice. Now imagine they must be compressed before uploading. You have an initial copy operation, a compression process, and another service that copies the compressed file to its final destination. There’s also cleanup of any temporary data, whether in memory or on disk. You see where I’m going… For you to enjoy a seamless mobile experience, others have built an intricate machinery of services, each composed of small, “intelligent” puzzle pieces.
After this technical deep dive, the key takeaway is that you can achieve almost anything in your business by layering enough interconnected microservices to work for you 24/7, 365 days a year.
A Bakery … or Any Business
Yes, all of this sounds great, but perhaps you run a bakery…
Fair enough—but do you only sell in your bakery? Do you accept orders online? Which system do you use to receive them? Do you post photos on Instagram? Do you maintain a blog about your products, your region, its customs, your potential customers, and their interests? Do you do anything beyond opening the doors, baking bread, and selling it?
Consider a wholesale bakery that doesn’t serve the public directly but sells bread to other businesses. It has a production facility, a logistics network for deliveries, and a digital customer-service and ordering system—all managed through an interconnected application. From managing delivery fleets to ordering raw materials and tracking inventory to ensure timely restocking—based on seasonal demand—you oversee everything from a centralized control and monitoring tool. Plus, it integrates multiple sales and distribution points and franchises across the region. That’s potential. I made it up, but it’s entirely plausible.
Okay, maybe that level of complexity isn’t for you—you just want to sell more bread than you do now (and by “bread,” we could substitute “beer,” “magazines,” “books,” “consulting services,” “personal training,” or whatever your business offers).
Key Areas for Any Business
- Direct Advertising
- Social Media
- SEO (how well your content ranks in search engines)
We’ll discuss these points in an upcoming chapter.
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Contact Me
If you think I can help with your digital business and need a consultant, don’t hesitate to get in touch. I work with both startup and non-startup clients to digitalize and grow their technology and revenue without losing their minds.
You can also email me at info@ruymanborges.com.
Soon, I will launch a no-spam newsletter that truly adds value, along with a subscription to specialized, easy-to-digest content for non-technical audiences to benefit from over two decades of my online experience and more than three decades of IT expertise.
