Digital transformation journey is the foundation for running a successful business in any industry. Even if you primarily deal with customers or clients in person, it’s important to have digital initiatives and presence in a world that has a constantly changing environment.
At the very least, you need a website. Without a website, you’ll never catch up to or surpass the competition. However, digital transformation efforts involve more than just building a website.
What is digital transformation?
The impact of digital transformation on a business outcomes is immense. Digital transformation strategies will:
- Increase efficiency
- Decrease human error
- Increase profitability
- Decrease waste
Automation plays a key role in digital transformation
Digital technology is at the heart of many digital transformation initiatives, with automation taking center stage. This nifty tool can take over repetitive tasks and save you some precious time.
Take switching from paper receipts to their digital counterparts as an instance. It’s a step forward but it doesn’t cut down on all the admin work – manually keying in purchases into your computer still takes up quite a bit of effort.
Now imagine if I told you that using automated systems for generating and storing these e-receipts could help? Suddenly, we’ve freed up plenty more minutes in your day thanks to our friend- Digital Technology.
What does digital transformation look like?
Digital transformation can be expressed in a variety of ways, but generally involves the following elements:
- Adopting cloud storage for company files.
- Using a VoIP service that connects your team through software.
- Using automation throughout your business. For instance, installing automated threat detection on your company’s network, automating aspects of email marketing, and workflow automation.
- Using data capture and analysis tools.
- Using dynamic management tools including enterprise risk management (ERM), customer relationship management (CRM), and content management (CRM) systems.
- Running automated split tests on sales pages to improve your marketing efforts.
- Replacing any manual task or system with a digital or automated process.
Don’t worry if you can’t implement every digital system you need right away. Any change you make will benefit your business. Start where you can, and as your business grows, continue transforming your systems and processes.
Benefit 1: Faster turnaround for clients
When your business operates efficiently, projects will get done faster and with fewer setbacks. It’s normal for projects to experience setbacks. No industry or business is immune. However, most setbacks are the result of miscommunications, miscalculations, and other human errors.
Automating your business processes will reduce the frequency of human error, and will therefore reduce setbacks. With fewer setbacks, projects will move forward with less mistakes, fewer back-and-forth, and be delivered faster.
Benefit 2: Better visibility
Visibility is next to nothing without going digital. Digital tools provide visibility you can never obtain otherwise. For example, you can install software that monitors your company network and records every login, including the credentials used, the time and date, the device used to login, the IP address, and where that user goes throughout your network.
By monitoring your network, you’ll be able to see suspicious user logins. For example, if an employee who lives in California accesses the company network at 3am PST, that could indicate unauthorized access via stolen credentials.
Benefit 3: Tighter security
Digital transformation strategy makes it possible to install security software on your company’s network and employee devices. Where your network is concerned, software can identify, isolate, and deal with threats in real-time. Manually monitoring your network will never be as secure.
Digital software is a must for cybersecurity. If you don’t use software to secure your company data on all fronts, your business is a flashing target for a data breach.
Benefit 4: Less employee turnover
Efficiency has a direct impact on employee turnover. Employees get frustrated and resentful when they’re bound by systems and rules that make it hard to do their job. If this is happening in your company, you can expect a high turnover rate.
For example, marketing teams rely on email marketing software to move leads through the customer journey. When an employer insists on sending emails manually, it’s a deal-breaker for most marketers. Few marketers will tolerate using manual methods when software can do the same job faster and better.
Digital transformations provides business value solutions for companies that are still using manual methods. If you want to reduce your turnover rate, you have to reduce frustration in the workplace. Software and automation tools are the solution.
Benefit 5: Better insights
Digital transformation initiative has the power to provide you data analytics with better insights into your company’s operations on multiple levels.
While all data is important, sometimes businesses forget to collect customer data. With customer relationship management (CRM) software, for example, you can log into your account to see how your customers are interacting with your brand.
You can view sales and returns in absolute numbers or relative percentages, and you can see your email open rate, your web form conversion rate, and more. You also have the option to view raw data or run custom reports that generate only the data sets you select.
Being able to access this kind of data and run custom reports is essential for improving your customer experience. Improving your customer experience will positively impact your brand reputation and sales.
Benefit 6: Stronger data-driven business decisions
Business decisions are only as good as the data driving those decisions. As data accuracy increases, so does the efficacy of your decisions.
Digital transformation leaders can improve business models, competitive advantage and most importantly data-driven decisions by collecting and analyzing data more accurately. There’s no way to collect and analyze data manually anymore and get the results that will keep you competitive.
Not utilizing digital tools for data analysis will prevent you from competing at any high level in your industry. If you don’t make the switch, you’ll be left behind.
Benefit 7: Real-time collaboration
Perhaps the biggest benefit to digital transformation is having access to real-time collaboration. Whether your team needs to collaborate with each other, or involve clients, real-time collaboration is a game-changer.
Using email to collaborate on a project isn’t enough. Emails tend to get buried and forgotten when they’re not taken care of right away. Worse, if anyone is left out of the email, they won’t get the communication and will be out of the loop. This can cause major delays and misunderstandings.
Your business needs machine learning, cloud-based collaboration and project management software. Without real time data and collaboration software, team members need to wait hours and sometimes days for a response just to move onto their next task.
Real-time collaboration puts your project task management and team conversations in the same spot. Important communications are available to the entire team in real-time and with most applications, push notifications can be sent to both desktop and mobile devices.
Benefit 8: Flexibility
Digital transformation makes a business flexible. Once you’re fully digital and in the cloud, you can move your operations anywhere in the world. You can choose to run a physical office or maintain a remote team of employees.
When your operations go digital, your workflow and business operations won’t be interrupted by unexpected events like the stay-at-home orders and economic shutdowns seen during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.
Benefit 9: Improved customer experience
Going digital will improve the customer experience in many ways. In addition to providing important insight about customer behavior, you can use digital tools to create an amazing customer experience.
For example, you can implement quick and easy web forms for lead magnets, and you can add a help desk or ticket system to your website. You can accomplish pretty much anything with the right software.
Technology is the future – we can help you go digital
Are you still using manual methods to generate sales, subscribers, or other conversions in your business? Are you taking advantage of the latest software applications designed to maximize your revenue and customer retention rates?
If you’re not fully digital yet, or if you’re just starting to see the value in digital solutions like digital transformation project with revenue growth, we can help.
At Dev.co, our developers can help you fast track your way into the digital world. If you don’t have a website, we can build one for you. If your website needs a facelift, we can create a new design for you. We can even create custom software applications for you to use in your business (like a custom CRM) or we can create applications to provide as a service for your clients.
To learn more about the services we provide, contact us and tell us what you need. We’d love to help you make the most out of digital transformation trends.
Connect with Ryan on Linkedin.
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