Digital transformation is one of the most common and overused buzzwords these days.
But do you know what exactly it means, and how you can apply it to your organization?
This article will explain to you everything you need to know about this burning topic.
What is digital transformation?
If simply put, digital transformation means using any sort of technology to automate your business. This may entail any of the following latest/greatest technologies:
- CRM software (customer relationship management)
- ERP software (enterprise resource planning)
- HCM software (human capital management)
- SCM (Supply Chain Management) software
- Internet of Things (IoT)
- Artificial intelligence
- Business Intelligence
- Predictive analytics
- Machine learning
- Industry 4.0
- Blockchain
- Robotics
So, the concept of digital transformation orbits around the use of the latest technologies and thus benefiting your organization in terms of efficient operations, increased ROI, enhanced customers experience, improved customer relations and more.
Given the benefits of digital transformation, it is now a burning topic for enterprises all over the world. From top to bottom, almost every department in your organization makes use of digital advances including mobility, analytics, social media and smart-enabled devices – and increasing their usage of traditional technologies to improve customer relationships, value propositions, and internal processes.
On average, 60% of enterprises nowadays have digital capabilities while 62% have the leadership capabilities needed for digital transformation – almost 26% and 24% respectively.
Digital transformation during Covid-19
Undoubtedly the COVID-19 pandemic has led several organizations to revive themselves and increase their transformation, and the increase is getting vaster daily.
Seeing this exigency for change and minimal resistance to it –respondents are more optimistic and enthusiastic about the maturity of their enterprise’s total capabilities these days.
Since they’re noticing such a swift pace of capability resulting out in arenas including virtual work and collaboration and communication tools at the very outset of the pandemic, they had inflated or overestimated their maturity in all capabilities.
Though a large number of enterprises are adopting digital transformation to acquire reduced costs and operational efficiencies, they are witnessing optimum growth, as well, since technology keeps on improving and enhancing the customer experience.
Notwithstanding its existing and upcoming benefits, the digital transformation still looks tough to be adopted by certain enterprises. They are often surrounded with questions as:
- How can they enhance their customer experience?
- How can they improve their customer relations?
- How to drive value from their investments?
- How do they get good ROI?
- What to execute?
- Where to start?
- And more.
However, answers to all the above and many other questions lie in first understanding the term of digital transformation. At its core, this is a business-first approach, which helps enterprises in accelerating the transformation of their business model by taking advantage of technology to gain the enterprise’s goals and needs.
DT primarily entails collecting data from the environment and the physical landscape that was not earlier available and then making use of those insights to make informed business decisions. That instrumenting and connecting everything around us — the fusing of the physical and digital worlds— is the Internet of Things (IoT).
In certain areas, the Internet of Things (IoT) and digital transformation are synonymously used due to the substantial value that this new information and connectivity help through the transformation process. But the connectivity by IoT isn’t the sole goal, instead, it is a major subset and major enabler of digital transformation.
So, digital transformation isn’t just technology, it’s rather how you make use of it to improve your business models, operational efficiency and the customer experience.
How does digital transformation benefit your organization?
With the adoption of digital transformation, organizations are benefitted in several ways.
For example, the real-time location systems allow a retail business to keep track of its customers, inventory and assets. Not only does this solution help a customer find what he/she wants, but it also helps in increasing its ROI by simplifying its process and thus making it more efficient. That apart, to make its process more efficient, the retail company can add sensors as analytics help with data that helps in predicting declines before they occur, which brings a considerable reduction in downtime.
When the connected devices help you with these sorts of insights, the opportunities are infinite.
But let me tell you that those possibilities cannot be easily harnessed because effective digital transformation has complexities, and a lot of challenges need to be heeded:
First, an enterprise needs to toil hard to analyze its business and design goals and visualize for what they need transformation. Most importantly top-down executives have to plan a strategy and stay the course across what may be a multi-year journey.
Transformation should also entail all facets of your organization’s IT set-up and operational technologies that are recently detached from the conventional IT environment.
To effectuate and accelerate digital transformation, your enterprise’s operational technology and information technology not only be linked but fully integrated, as well.
Think big, act smart, and move fast
Finally, digital transformation generally requires new skill sets and partnerships that you might have not desired for earlier. By adding analytics capabilities and sensors, suitably dealing with security challenges, and identifying resources with the experience and skill and rendering the expected results are a few of the challenges.
However, to handle all these challenges and convert the commitment of digital transformation into reality, enterprises are required to think big, act small, and move fast.
This points to figure out where they are looking forward to moving from the get-go, ensuring how big the gap is between their big vision and current technology, choosing a point everyone can follow, and thereafter aggressively proceeding to ascertain the value of their first solution and realize their first results in the near term.
After reading the article about the Digital Transformation, we hope that you would like to know more about the company that can help you through the entire process of digital transformation and guide you through how this approach can benefit in your business growth.
If you have any questions about how to use the latest technologies, based on digital transformation or need some experts’ advice to implement the technologies such as ERP, CRM, HCM, SCM and more, we would be happy to answer them in the comment section below.
