As digital technologies drastically reshape industries and sectors, many companies are undergoing large-scale changes in an effort to harness the benefits of these upcoming trends and to keep up with their competitors. Digital transformation is leading companies to alter their business models and adapt themselves to the new market reality. The intriguing part about this is that it isn’t the companies bringing about this change, instead it’s the customer driving it.
In today’s time, customers want relevant content related to what they’re doing, anywhere, anytime and on their preferred device in their preferred format. In other words, it’s the customer’s journey that dictates a company’s strategy. And to keep up with this ‘round-the-clock’ connected customer, businesses need to embrace technology so that they can deliver an unparalleled customer experience.
Digital transformation is basically the incorporation of digital technology into all domains of a business, and fundamentally changes how companies function and deliver value to customers. It also involves a cultural change which requires organizations to consistently experiment, challenge the status quo, and become comfortable with failure.
How Enterprises are Adopting Digital Transformation
Digital transformation effectively integrates digital technology within different aspects of a business, and brings about significant changes in the business operation so as to deliver better customer experience. In other words, digital transformation is concerned with changing how a business interacts with its customers and how they offer their customers a memorable experience wherever and whenever they need it.
Research shows that when asked about what factors influence a business’ decision for implementing a digital transformation strategy, over half of all companies stated customer experience and customer satisfaction being the defining influences. The companies that do transform digitally are able to engage their customers. And these customers are six times more likely to buy a product from their preferred brand. Furthermore, highly engaged customers buy 90% more often, spend 60% more per every purchase, and have nearly 3x the annual value (compared to the average customer). Besides, companies that have adopted digital transformation are 26% times more profitable than their competitors.
Organizations are now undertaking digital transformation initiatives to leverage technological solutions to support the overall business operations:
Market Assessment
Before companies can start their journey of digital transformation, they must first honestly assess where they stand on the digital maturity curve. Whether a company has smaller and more agile competitors taking away their market share or relatively bigger ones are all factors to be considered. Unfortunately, most companies do not feel the need to go digital until there is a steady fall in their net income or rising pressure from competitors. Hence, companies need to do some scenario planning to bring about change within the organisation. Consider whether it would be viable for the business to not do anything while your competitors made efforts to engage customers via digital.
- Customer Intelligence
We are seeing organizations across the globe increasing their emphasis on predictive data analytics. They are not only collecting customer data but they are also interpreting the data for more valuable insights and consumer trends. This data is beingused to align their strategies to customer priorities. Begin with an outside-in perspective. Businesses need to focus on their customer and product first and foremost to outline their digital journey. And accordingly, businesses must keep on innovating to stay ahead of their customer’s constantly changing business needs.
- Customer Experience
Global organizations are all relying on technology to deliver unique experiences to an increasingly connected customer. Brands are connecting with customers like never before and increasing the reach of customer support via tools including personal AI assistants and chatbots. Interestingly we have seen how even players from traditional industries including the healthcare sector are also relying on video APIs for managing things and creating better experiences. Retailers and several e-commerce companies are now even turning to AI, Big Data, and IoT to improve business operations and create an omnichannel experience.
- New Business Models
Technology is being used by companies to uniquely position themselves in this highly competitive market. Especially during the pandemic, it has been observed that companies are using communication technologies such as audio conferencing and SMSmarketing to connect better with their target audience and create a more personal and convenient experience. At the same time, it’s essential to ensure that these systems are able to support the new ways of running a business. If companies do not timely assess these systems – which can often be slow, unresponsive and expensive to maintain –then their digital transformation efforts can go waste. It’s impossible to deliver a better customer experience without adequate foundational technology in place.
- Organizational Efficiency
Organizations are embracing digital transformation to enhance communication and re-imagine the workplace. Several companies are now starting to reimagine their workplace by permanently enabling remote work with the help of collaboration tools, audio conferencing, and video conferencing tools. With these tools, team members located in different parts of the world can easily connect and work together.
Summing Up
In conclusion, people and technology are the two main components in digital transformation. However, sometimes there are other factors which often prevent businesses from progressing upon their quest for digital dominance. The word ‘digital’ has become highly ubiquitous in today’s time, so much so that it’s unnecessary. It’s important to note here that embracing and employing new technology is no more just a tick box exercise anymore; rather it has become an essential commitment that companies need to make in order to survive and thrive in the forthcoming years.
Digital transformation isn’t only concerned with the individual channels which customers can use for interacting with a brand, and it isn’t only about social media, big data or the mobile revolution.At its core, a digitized organisation is the one that is free from silos and eager to rise to any kind of new technological challenges. But much more than anything, it’s an organisation with a changed mindset and empowered employees who are capable of placing customer experience at the heart of everything.