4 Digital Transformation Strategies You Should Adopt Before the
Next Pandemic
The future is unpredictable. Like the fact that you never imagined the world would be hit by a pandemic this year and your business will face such challenges. This has taught us a lot of things – from how we live to how we do business.
In a short period, a new world of virtual work reality has come to exist. This dramatic and rapid change in the business environment requires speed, innovation, and the ability to think beyond anything you have ever imagined.
It’s time to step on the path of digitalisation!
The world has already adopted a new digital norm, and this must reflect on your business strategies too. In this article, our SEO and digital experts explain what digital transformation is, why it is important for your business and strategies you need to embrace for building a strong and secure business.
What is Digital Transformation?
Digital transformation is the incorporation of digital technologies into a new or existing business process and culture, essentially changing how it operates and delivering value to consumers. It is changing the way business gets done and at times, creating entirely new business categories. Very often, people equate digital transformation with IT. But it’s not just about how your IT department functions; it encompasses the whole organisation – its processes, people, culture, structure, and delivery.
Why Digital Transformation is Inevitable for Your Business
This is not the first pandemic the world has seen; neither will this be the last. In the current situation, digital transformation is an essential matter of survival for many businesses. But digital is how the world will do business in the future too. Several organisations were already going through digitisation; the pandemic only increased the speed of this process. If you don’t keep up, you’ll be losing your customers to more efficient providers.
This transformation can be difficult in the beginning, but it can help you overcome many limitations that you face now in the traditional means of doing business.
- New ways for delivery: Digital transformation can open up new and more efficient channels for the delivery of products and services. The methods that were used for ages to distribute services are now transformed into more efficient and cost-effective digital ones.
- New ways for customer engagement: Your business can now reach out to more consumers than you could ever imagine from the old systems. The digital platform allows for personalised interaction in a much more efficient and cost-effective way through chats and social media.
- Cut down expenses: You can save money that you spend on renting workspaces and for old marketing methods. Online marketing is now more productive and lowers budget than traditional marketing. Streamlined organisational functions mean that processes right from production to delivery become cost-effective driving profits up.
4 Strategies for Digital Transformation
1. Adopt cloud technology
Beyond the obvious benefits of saving physical server space, getting into the cloud offers a quick, efficient, and smooth working environment. The biggest advantage of cloud computing is the easy scaling up and down of computing capacity. When you face a slump in business, you can quickly scale down and save costs. And when you need to scale up services in a hurry, you can do that too without any hassles.
Achieving a quicker time to market, simple monitoring of resource consumption, movement of functions like sales and marketing to the cloud are all advantages of a cloud-based computing environment.
2. Automate your business processes
Business process automation can enhance business efficiency. Automation makes it possible to access data from any location or device whenever you require it. The accountability and visibility of your working system increase because you can track and monitor the processes when they are in operation. Automation of business process help to keep out errors and quickly fix them if they occur. You can also reduce the expense of extra human resources. The automation of business processes also helps you to redirect your staff into tasks that require manual effort and judgment and leave the rest for the technology. Automation also allows implementing AI-backed Big Data. The decision-makers can arrive at better strategies with meaningful insights into the organisational and sales data.
3. Use social media interactions
Social media interactions are an effective way to improve your customer service strategy. You will be informed about your customer’s feedback and can also respond to their complaints and queries in rapid time.
Social media interactions can also boost the credibility of your business. Social proof can help you to increase your brand image and maximise visibility. It is crucial to make your interactions less sales-heavy so that it looks more authentic and approachable. You can also keep track of the trends of your customer behaviour and also learn about your competitors. Social media interactions play a vital role in bringing relevant leads which can then be converted to sales by your sales teams.
4. Self-service options and E-commerce
Self-service availability can increase the trust of customers for your business. They consist of features like service requests, password reset, subscription renewals etc. A self-service portal can also include interactive services like chat services. A good self-service portal will have a user-friendly design. This includes search fields that give suggestions and customer profile’s which operate based on customer’s previous purchases and service history. This way, you also can reduce the need for your service team.
While brick-and-mortar stores will always be around, e-commerce is rapidly rising. The best approach is to have a combination of a brick-n-mortar and online store; successful retailers seem to be using both modes of sales. Nearly 50% of global consumers say they will continue buying online, even when this pandemic is done and gone. That is half of your customer base! Read more on the
advantages of an e-commerce store.
Digital transformation is a necessity. Most companies are reluctant to embrace this transformation because it means a huge change for the whole organisation. But when done right, it makes your business more competitive, efficient, and better at customer delight. It also means that you can quickly innovate or respond to a crisis. Companies shying away from this necessity of transformation may find their existence threatened in the face of another pandemic like the current COVID-19 situation.
Digital transformation needs substantial knowledge and experience in IT as well as Business Process Analysis. The Computing Australia Group has been guiding and partnering businesses in the APAC region for years to transform their organisations effectively. If you would like to leverage that experience, contact us or email at sales@computingaustralia.group and speak to our experts.
Jargon Buster
Big Data – a technology to systematically extract data from huge sets, analyse and present it in a meaningful way.
AI – Artificial Intelligence – the ability of a machine (mostly computer or robot) to do a task that is usually done by humans. It is called artificial because it is a machine intelligence unlike natural human intelligence.
by The Computing Australia Group