Digital Transformation: What It Is and Why It Matters for Your Business?

Although the world is abuzz with “digital transformation”, it is in fact much more than a buzzword now. It is not anymore about having a mobile-first strategy or using agile development. Then what it is? Let’s hear it from our software development specialist!

What is digital transformation?

Digital transformation involves bringing radical change into all aspects and operations of your business processes, right from back office operations to customer interactions, using cutting edge technologies.

It is all about leveraging technology to reinvent the way you do your business by making your foundational components such as infrastructure, operating processes and marketing models more effective and efficient rather than enhancing traditional methods. 

We have enabled many of our clients to reach their aspirations by collectively harnessing the powers of cloud, mobile, analytics and social media.

However, there are many aspects besides technology that you need to take into account prior to considering digital transformation for your business.

Daniel Newman, CEO of Broadsuite Media Group, terms those aspects as six pillars of digital transformation beyond technology.

6 Pillars of digital transformation

1) People: The most critical among all the other aspects of digital transformation is having the right talent onboard. You need to invest in your employees, respect their ideas and keep them on the same page in your digital transformation efforts so that you attain your digital goals successfully.

Using technology to create meaningful experiences for the people associated with your company, i.e., your employees as well as customers is highly crucial to push yourself forward in the digital journey.

2) Experiences: You need to consider both customer and employee experiences because positivity of both the experiences have the potential to drive your business towards success.

The importance of customer experience is extolled by the words of legendary Steve Jobs, “You have got to start with customer experience and work back toward the technology, not the other way around.”

No wonder, Apple has been an iconic tech company! You too should never lose your focus from customer experience and their expectations prior to investing in technology while you pursue your company’s digital transformation aspirations.

Even your employee experiences need to be taken into account to ensure that your digital transformation project starts off on the right foot.

3) Change: Change is inevitable in digital transformation; the sooner you start preparing for it the better it is. In other words, you cannot expect transformation without expecting change; they go hand in hand.

Here, we need to remember the words of the great inventor, engineer and head of research at General Motors, Charles Franklin Kettering:

So, firstly, you would need to craft a strategy for change management in order to encourage change in your organization. Next, communicate your expectations to your employees and provide them with the right ambience and tools to get through this change successfully.

4) Innovation: Often the words transformation and innovation, though not the same, are used synonymously. As already defined, digital transformation brings radical change in business process it does demand implementation of innovative thinking.

Innovation in turn requires collaborative approach, open communication and freedom to create product or services that essentially solves problems.

The scale of innovation differs, some being massive and disruptive while others are small yet meaningful enabling you to create differentiation in your offering or enhance customer satisfaction.

So, innovation is a very crucial aspect of digital transformation process and its constant presence in your organization is necessary to push digital transformation efforts forward.

5) Leadership: For digital transformation to succeed in your organization leadership has to come from the top management. Hence, your top leaders must get involved and lead as well.

Their involvement would ensure effective change management and at the same time help bring order when others tend to go with the flow.

Also your digital initiatives are likely to fail when your top management leaders do not get involved proactively and lead the business transformation.

6) Culture: The culture of your company which comprises of all the five aspects discussed above is the first thing you should start with while planning your digital transformation journey.

Without the right business culture, your digital initiatives cannot survive. Therefore, you must create an environment wherein your employee and customer experiences matters the most, people are the most precious asset, innovation is at its peak and there is an effective plan in place to tackle change.

Thus, you lead your business into a culture that is ready to embrace digital transformation.

Why is digital transformation important for your business?

The business world is governed by cut throat competition and if you fail to evolve in this fast-changing landscape, you could endanger your survival in the market.

If your business is not embracing digital transformation, it will be missing out on the below advantages:

Access to globalized marketplace

Digital transformation can provide you with access to larger online markets that are currently beyond your reach. Just your software development company needs to put your resources on the cloud for you to access it from anywhere, anytime with an internet connection.

The entire infrastructure you need would be just a click away. The storage and backup recovery of your digital assets as well as security would be effectively handled by your cloud service providers.

Besides, communication processes are also streamlined through the comprehensive use of cloud-based collaborative tools, often available for free.

Streamlined operations

When your business undergoes digital transformation, it would have powerful tools facilitating seamless collaboration across departments. Communication will also be streamlined across the supply chain and entire workforce.

High level of digital structuring across internal operations will enable accurate forecasts for sales and income and thus allow you to plan for the future growth of your company.

Data-driven decisions

When your business is digitally transformed, management on each and every level would be streamlined. You would have tools to gather, analyze and visualize data collected from every functional units of your organization.

The predictive models generated from this data would enable managers to identify risks as well as opportunities for your business.

You can even analyze consumer behaviour to figure out the next market trend and at the same time identify the hottest sales lead quite early in the sales cycle.

You can also easily recognize the inefficiencies in production workflows and single them out for improvement.

Summing up

So, as discussed above, if you do not modernize your organization then you would definitely be left behind and become obsolete. You are more likely to lose your customers to your competitors who are efficient and deliver engaging experiences across multiple channels.

So, it’s high time to re-define your business models and get in touch with our IT consulting experts. When are you planning to take your first step towards digital transformation? What are the challenges that your company is facing?

Discuss with our experts and begin a conversation by dropping down your comments below.