What Is Digital Transformation?
The process of using digital technologies to create or modify business processes, improve customer experiences, and culture to meet changing market and business requirements is simply known as Digital Transformation. In today’s digital age, Digital Transformation is basically re-conceptualizing businesses.
As digital transformation may look different to every company, it can be simply defined as the digital technology integration into all areas of business which eventually results in vital changes in business operations and value delivery to customers.
It is fundamentally cultural and technological change that challenges organizations to experiment often and get comfortable with failure. Surpassing the traditional roles of organizations like marketing, sales, and customer services, digital transformation is about how you think and engage with customers.
With digital technology on our side, we have moved to smart applications that help us to reimagine the working of our business and our customer engagement strategies.
Is Digital Transformation Just For Enterprises Or For SMBs Too?
The irresistible dependence on technology of work and life today has made digital transformation inevitable for small to medium businesses (SMBs) too.
The good news is that SMBs can now take advantage of all the insights and opportunities available to affluent enterprise companies only. Businesses of any size can maximize value with technology and can improve customer experiences.
The businesses that have already embarked on their digital transformation journey will see a bright future; those who continue to take business as usual may see slow growth. According to IDG 2018 Digital Business Survey reports, 89% of organizations have plans to adopt a “digital-first” business strategy. Whereas, only 44% have fully taken this approach so far.
For small organizations who are just getting started can future-proof their business with digital transformation. Building a business in the 21st century on handwritten ledgers just isn’t workable. Planning and building business digitally set up the organization agile and ready to grow.
Benefits Of Digital Transformation
Let’s take a look at both sides of Digital Transformation beginning with advantages.
Makes Business More Competitive
As mentioned earlier, 44% of organizations have implemented digital business strategies. Moreover, every new business in the market is shifting its focus on adapting digital transformation to put its operations at the forefront. Well-suited digital technologies allow businesses to be agile, productive, and efficient, improving ROI.
Makes Employees More Prolific
The performance of the business is directly proportional to the performance of the employees. If digital transformation will improve the performance of the employees, the overall performance of the business will eventually increase.
Automation of production has brought positive results for both white- and blue-collar workers. With the robotization of processes, artificial intelligence, and assembly lines, humans have more time for intellectual work now.
The aim of modern technology is to optimize office procedures. For example, customer relationship management software was created to minimize repetitive tasks in marketing and sales, along with combining and facilitating accounting and client management.
Through such accelerators, the ability of employees to fulfill their potential increases. Just by facilitating access to information, even simple programs like messengers or cloud services can boost employees’ performance.
Provides A Better Customer Experience
Delivering an exceptional customer experience is one of the essential principles of business management. An average human being spends about 12 hours a day mining information, spending money, and getting entertained digitally. Facilitating clients with a seamless user experience on digital platforms can lead to a satisfying customer experience.
Through smart use of technology, digital transformation helps businesses to meet their customer needs effectively and efficiently. Whether it’s through a new app, some digital offering, or through a better website, the key to a successful customer experience is smart technology paired with swift customer adoption.
Downsides Of Digital Transformation
Following are the downsides of digital transformation:
Never-ending Digital Transformation
As far as downsides of digital transformation are considered, this one is inevitable. For the imaginable future, technological progress is unending. That means digital transformation is an ongoing process. This should come as no surprise to anyone that the evolution of the digital market is fast and furious.
Could Be Time-taking
Adapting to new management solutions can be a little time and effort-consuming. Although we all are familiar with using smartphones and sending emails, digital transformation could be a bit intricating.
The Telegraph reports that finding the right technology is one of the most tenacious issues for entrepreneurs. Certainly, implementing and optimizing technology can be confusing.
Finding the right and suitable tool for business requires research and can be time taking. Moreover, training the employees on how to use the tools effectively will also take time.
May Lead To Upheaval And Uncertainty For Employees
The employees bear the brunt of the ongoing digital transformations. While 87 percent of employees say they’re willing to learn new abilities, everyone’s stress tolerance is different.
As a result, when educating staff to use digital tools, a customized strategy is essential. This would be excessively expensive and logistically difficult to accomplish using traditional training methods.
In this era of rapid digital disruption, it’s critical to provide employees the support they need to feel inspired and secure in their jobs.
How Small Business Can Successfully Implement Digital Transformation?
It’s quite evident that digital transformation is necessary for businesses of any size in order to stay competitive and relevant in the global market. For small businesses, there are certain keys to successfully implement digital transformation.
- Encouraging collaboration among internal teams is one of the key factors of introducing digital transformation to your business. The fundamental transformation is what required first to change your business and its culture.
- The purpose of this is to streamline business operations, increase efficiency, automate workflows, and ultimately improve the customer experience. Moving to cloud makes it much easier for SMBs to effectively operate & manage business functions and streamline workflow.
- SMBs can also leverage data collection and processing software along with AI technologies to make business strategies and execute effective data-driven business decisions.
- Collaborating with right technology partners and business consultants can help SMBs to conveniently embark on their digital transformation journey.
How Can XO Help?
Finding a reliable resource for IT guidance can be a difficult task for many businesses. XO is here to help you with everything you need on your journey. IT services industry publications have recognized our leaders and consultants for their knowledge, expertise, innovation, and insight.
Maximizing value for our clients is a priority for us. We’re continuously looking for methods to make your technology more efficient, and help you gain more value from IT, both new and existing solutions.
Sometimes, you have to spend money to make money, but the most costly or flashiest IT isn’t necessarily the best, especially for small businesses. We’ll help you make wiser decisions that generate genuine ROI based on our comprehensive understanding of what’s out there and what’s worked for our other clients.
