Have you ever wondered, what is the most important fact to ensure the success of any large-scale transformation? Today, there is more data and changing behavior than ever before and it has continued to progress. Social media, gaming devices, healthcare equipment and many more, everything generates data. Evolution of data and the evolution of customer control have altered the way organizations manage the customer experience. Therefore, a business must harness data effectively to provide customer experience.
In the new digital era, businesses looking to maintain a competitive edge today are embracing new technologies and adopting new working techniques. Moreover, digital transformation has shown a drastic change in technological advances and consumer demand. It has been successful in increasing competition by enabling a new type of business innovation. So, how can you prepare for digital transformation?
Digital Transformation covers all aspects of your organization such as cloud, customer experience, eCommerce, integration, CRM, digital marketing, mobile, and collaboration, analytics, and Big Data solutions. Today it is growing at a pace that none of us have ever experienced. The first step in the digital transformation process is fundamentally changing the way you think about your business today. It involves shifting your investments from older technologies and business strategies to investing in new innovative business models based on the latest and emerging technologies.
In other words, digital transformation is a necessity to stay competitive. And you need to address these changes before your competitors do, or you will be in hot water or worse. Digital transformation will have a big impact on your business as you will be able make more money, recruit the best people, improve team productivity, beat your competition and create happier customers and partners and best of all you will have more time for fun.
Where does your business sit currently?
Digital transformation is no longer a buzzword, whether you are ready or not. According to the World Economic Forum digital technologies are disrupting business models, designing new collaboration routes and rewriting customer engagement expectations in every sector and continent.
Is your organization digitally ready? Companies which stay ahead recognize the significance of preparing their workforce for the influence of digital age. So, don't get left behind. Digital transformation is impelling an intersection of business and management skills. With traditional IT skills, this convergence is forcing companies to reimagine their structure, roles, and teams rapidly. Companies that digitally transform have 16% higher revenues generate, 26% more profit and have 12% greater market valuations. The organizations that will stay ahead of disruptors recognize the importance of preparing their workforce for the digital age.
Key components of a successful digital transformation strategy
Generally, the strength of a digital transformation strategy lies in its goals and objectives. Less digitally mature organization tends to focus on individual technologies and have strategies that are decidedly operational in focus. Disruptors transforming the global business landscape are no more business as usual. Earlier business practices no more exist because of digitalization in every field. The reason for business transformation includes:
- Rapid technology advancements
- Growing demands of digital consumers
- Unparalleled accessibility & connectivity
- Growing competition from digital players
- Technology extending customer value propositions
- Interconnected global business ecosystem
Always remember that a productive digital transformation demands a well-imagined strategy for changing the culture and serving customers in new and creative ways. No matter if it means considerable disruption to the old ways of doing business. Here are 6 key factors that can help you to make an effective digital transformation strategy.
- Lead from the Front- as it demands executive vision and leadership.
- Put Strategy before Technology- overarching cultural and technological changes support digital transformation
- Encourage New Cultural Norms- disruptive innovation and risk-taking should be encouraged and rewarded.
- Reconsider the customer journey- allows you to work according to customer’s viewpoint.
- Interrupt your own business- more integrated way of working at all levels of the organization.
- Track new technology- technology should be a later concern in digital transformation.
How to prepare for it
Digital transformation should be the top most priority of every organization. Organizations want to take advantage of opportunities represented by the digital technology and aim to advance their impact on employees and customers. However, the process of digital transformation can be often extremely complex. Taking this into consideration, here are six simple steps business need to take to prepare for the digital transformation process.
Consider customer outcomes
According to the Forrester report done in 2017, it was discovered that, in order to help customers get to the outcomes they desire, business should use digital transformation. In other words, this means business should not be as a set of goods and services, rather as the part of the customer's personal value. For example, SaaS is a platform where customer success is constantly discussed. Therefore, considering customer outcomes consequently increases your value to customers.
Invest in the right technologies
Digital transformation is not all about heavy spending as it can never guarantee success. Generally, there are three technologies of digitalization that have the ability to impact your business operations. These three digitalization technologies include:
- IOT, the internet of things- it has the potential to provide operational intelligence
- The cloud-due to it scalability
- Big data- it transforms data into predictive and actionable insights
In order to achieve success, one should ensure that they are investing in the technologies that are beneficial for their business. Since there are lots of options available, one should choose wisely. However, anything you choose should be flexible enough to accommodate growth and an eventual move into the cloud.
Define your business culture
In some cases, the digital transformation may demand reconsideration of your business culture. Not only may this, in order to engage team members’ throughout the process, it also requires collaborating of your environment. Therefore if your desire for a successful digital transformation in your business, you will need commitment and hard work. For instance, companies struggle with traditional people to gain buy-in, thus a barrier to communication arise in such a case. In most cases, businesses that foster collaborative cultures, along with a commitment to innovation, tend to be able to get through digital transformation more easily.
Empower your employees
One of the prior steps in the process of digital transformation is improving your employee's knowledge. In order to train your staff for the purpose to keep new systems secure and effective, you can take help from any of trusted multi-vendor IT provider. Therefore, enhancing your employee’s skill can boost their own career development as well as company productivity and efficiency.
Align your strategy with your business goals
Since the process of digital transformation is unending, new technologies can be brought in all of the time. However, in order to avoid investing in new technology, it is important to identify where technology change is needed most. Moreover, with the objective of aligning your business transformation strategy to your business goals select the best technology that will help achieve your overall business goals.
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