Efrat Vulfsons July 28, 2021 The internet making the “world a global village” may mean different things to different people; however, it is a complete revolution to the business world. It is the dawn of online transactions and the birth of eCommerce.
While the business world was grappling with the “revolution,” the COVID-19 pandemic gave another jolt; the business world almost came to a standstill, the world economy almost crumbled, and it became necessary to innovate. Drastic decisions were taken, changes to the way people live and associate became necessary, and the business world had to quickly adjust to a new norm.
Adjusting to a new norm is not something you just wake up and dabble into; it necessitates a careful plan, it’s a project you must think deeply about, it’s a complete transformation. A lot of changes must occur.
You will have to adopt some technological innovations. Culture must change, and while all of these are going on, you must always remember that the ultimate goal is to improve customer experience.
Now that you’ve found yourself in this situation, what should be your new line of action?
The only way to ensure that you still remain relevant in the business world with all the happenings is to embark on digital transformation. In 2019, it was reported that companies would spend more than $ 2 trillion on digital transformation, and to kick-start you into reimagining your business, Statista forecasts that by 2023, digitally transformed organizations are to contribute to more than half of global GDP.
Embracing Digital Transformation Strategy
Businesses must prepare themselves with a proper digital transformation strategy by adopting new technologies and optimizing legacy systems to improve operations, and ultimately, customer experience.
Most times, the essence of digital transformation is to enhance better customer experience, and to achieve this you have to re-evaluate how your organization utilizes technology, employees, and processes to realize the brand’s objectives and customers’ satisfaction.
In attempting to achieve the goals, you will have to come up with new initiatives, models, and revenue streams for your organization. As the head of the organization, the CEO is expected to set the ball rolling with the CIO.
Other senior leaders and even the middle management have important roles to play for a successful digital transformation. The primary aim of this collaboration is to merge business objectives with application development models.
The impact of customers on digital transformation
Usually, the need for digital transformation is required by ensuring that an organization satisfies the customers. Today, customers want real-time interactive experiences, coupled with accessibility and availability.
Sometimes, ordinary human labor may not be enough to address customers’ needs. You may have to deploy measures like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and automation to enhance this. These measures enable your organization to provide an effective real-time consumer-centric experience throughout the customer journey.
The place of new applications in digital transformation
Your effort in reimaging your business can not proceed without integrating new technologies, and the advancements that come up are resulting in modern and highly effective, and efficient apps that help in the execution of business operations and processes.
The adoption of some of these apps by many organizations has radically simplified workflows. Examples of apps that businesses have adopted are Microsoft Word, Adobe Photoshop, Facebook pages manager, and Duolingo.
Depending on your niche, you may have to consider the following tips before adopting any app.
- Do the apps you want to integrate align with the initiatives you have in mind?
- What will be the cost of training the manpower required to operate the apps?
- What metrics do you deploy to determine the effectiveness of the apps?
- Does the end justify the means?
As there are a lot of apps in the market today, and you may need quite a number of them to successfully run your business, you’ll have a good integration strategy in place. Digital transformation depends to a large extent on your ability to integrate apps.
The knowledge that digital transformation is not just the business of the IT department alone, and that other sections must key into the project, means that you must come up with a digital transformation blueprint to enhance the journey. Where the IT department will greatly help out is to ensure that core backend systems that can provide valuable data are connected to the apps.
If your blueprint spells out costs, staff onboarding and training, ownership of processes, assignments you’ll outsource, what you ultimately want to achieve, and how you’ll achieve it, you are on the road to reimage your business.
Where you have issues with legacy apps that have become obsolete, you should consider changing them. They may not be compatible with the operating systems, browsers, and IT infrastructures you need for digital transformation
The need for a shift in culture
One big hindrance to reimaging is the belief that there must not be a culture shift, this is a big problem when brands attempt to embark on digital transformation. According to a recent McKinsey survey of global executives, it was revealed that shortcomings in organizational culture greatly impede an organization’s efforts at digital transformation success.
The survey pinpointed three vital digital-culture deficiencies: functional and departmental silos, a reluctance in taking risks, and difficulty establishing and working on a single view of the customer. Your digital transformation and reimaging initiatives may warrant that employees make use of their own tools and preferred solutions, this may lead to a lack of collaboration and refusal to share information, the result will be that perspectives on customers and their needs will vary and inconsistent without collaborating or sharing information.
A culture of collaboration is highly essential for the success of digital transformation, you may indeed have to improvise and optimize along the way, you must, however, not allow your attempt at optimization to becloud your real intention of encouraging experimentation and accelerating growth.
Conclusion
Reimaging your business with digital transformation is an all-encompassing project. The employees must be carried along, customers’ expectations have to be met, apps, tools, software, and all other relevant technologies have to be initiated.
Culture shift and collaboration are important ingredients to the success of digital transformation projects. Competition is becoming stiffer and consumers now have a lot of options; you must gear efforts to providing a top-notch digital experience to satisfy your customers.
Any customer now wants real-time and seamless experiences from buying to customer support to the delivery of a product or service. Customers want unalloyed, safe, and immersive digital experiences. Your digital customer experience must therefore be qualitative and intentional.
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