Believe it or not but digital transformation is reinventing business. Every organization including yours now is facing a choice between innovation or extinction. Digital transformation is not only termed as information technology but it’s rethinking your entire business strategy and organizational culture. Maybe even changing the company culture.
In order to succeed in digital, you must think of it not just as a support function but as a strategic competency. Digital transformation is not only about applying technology to the businesses but to create a brand new business model that sits on top of technology. For example, amazon.com is not only a product listing and selling website but it actually changed the entire experience of customer shopping with disruption.
It is very imperative that your business adapt to digital transformation and gain the benefits of the ways by which the digital world has changed the consumer expectations and behavior. It can be your customers, sales channels or competitors who are already practicing digital transformation.
As of today, mobile devices actually out ruled total hours spent online for different purposes such as browsing, emailing and purchasing. This is on a global scale. It is observed that the eCommerce industry is growing by more than 20% every year. When we look at these scoping figures you will find that about 70% are millennials, 60% are Gen-Ex, 50% of baby boomers and 30% seniors prefer to shop online rather than visiting conventional stores.
This is not only the case to retain consumers but also B2B. More than 52% of B2B customers actually search for a server or a product on social media platforms or at least get influenced by it. And about 53% of the B2B customers use their mobile phones to look for more info using eCommerce platforms.
Even your operations, competitors, products, customers, and employees are very much dependent on digital technology. Digital transformation will always accelerate for multiple reasons. Firstly, technology is evolving at a tremendous speed. Secondly, the data is available as never before that can be used to run unit economics to make better decisions in the business.
Keeping yourself up to date with the latest technology and the emerging market will always keep you very competitive. If not, you won’t be able to survive for long. Today’s extreme importance of data makes digital transformation different. It’s not only large data to work with but also real-time data. This data can be about your customers, prospects, competitors, distribution channels and different markets.
If you are capable to understand this data and know how to use it, you can close loopholes in the business and make critical decisions. These decisions are practical and not based on vague suggestions or opinions from the crew members. Digital transformation brings in the best possible options available to your business decisions that too with an instant effect.
This helps you focus on new things to try and do it correctly. Digital transformation has the full potential to compete in the playing field. It provides economic tools and strategies that help any business compete with large competitive organizations. If you look closely, the successful companies have many a time changed their business models and business processes in the way that they improve the customer experience right from onboarding to churn.
Big data analytics is what makes this come to life. As it depends on data and the data depends on the effective collection, online security, applications, and analytics. The process to accomplish this is very simple. Start by obtaining the data, protecting the data, analyzing the data and utilize the data.
These are the key factors of digital transformation and these are important skills that your organization has to either hire, outsource or conduct training with the organization to achieve these goals. According to the 2017 Forrester report, more than 70% of the companies said that they have a digital strategy in place however, only about 15% have the right tools and skills to execute it.
Digitally transforming your company truly changes everything from corporate strategy, business processes, marketing, branding and skill set of the employees. This is bridging the gap between your company and the technology you to learn.
The digital business world is full of new innovations and technological advancements. It is very important for every business to keep up with it for long-lasting business sustainability. You will see many ads online from google, amazon & software companies that are now trying to mold the behavior of the customer by building a brand using digital transformational tools.
Digital transformation strategy is the new way of planning business goals and keeping your customers happy. It’s the game of digital tools and the data that it brings to help entrepreneurs and business employees to get a better idea of actuality in the business that helps them to plan ahead of time.
Stephanie
Stephanie is the Marketing Director at Talkroute and has been featured in Forbes, Inc, and Entrepreneur as a leading authority on business and telecommunications.
Stephanie is also the chief editor and contributing author for the Talkroute blog helping more than 100k entrepreneurs to start, run, and grow their businesses.