The 4 Big Questions to Ask When Addressing Digital Transformation

We constantly hear about the Digital Transformation that is becoming more and more popular among companies.

With trends changing faster than ever, it's easy to see “digital transformation” as more than just another buzzword. Furthermore, this transformation applies differently to a wide range of industries.

For consumers, “digital transformation” is the phenomenon where the user can easily connect with many service providers or businesses through multiple online channels. For companies, digital transformation represents market opportunities through more advanced technology and knowledge

So we can see that digital transformation is a multifaceted journey with different goals depending on your industry and digital maturity.

Leaders charged with leading digital transformation projects are being pulled in many different directions, with competing demands from IT, marketing, sales, and operations, and they are struggling simultaneously to stay on top of all of these competing demands. Without a clear understanding, the wrong people, with the wrong resources, and the wrong KPIs are often put in charge, causing the digital transformation project to fail.

But, in the midst of all these transformations and technological innovations, what does it take to succeed? Learn about the four pillars of Digital Transformation that you need to include in your strategy to achieve the success of your company.

1. What should I do to face the change??

For many companies, digital transformation begins with upgrading their IT infrastructure, as well as their mobile infrastructure, data lakes, and the cloud.

When complete, an IT upgrade provides your business with access to up-to-date tools that deliver increased employee efficiency, lower IT maintenance costs, and increased employee satisfaction. These tools will allow your employees to be more effective, which will result in increased productivity for your business.

Typically, the CIO or CTO should lead this pillar of digital transformation, and the KPIs to indicate success are access to new tools, reduced maintenance costs, increased employee satisfaction, and improved business performance.

2. What needs to change in my company??

Make the way you work more agile by automating the processes that are carried out manually and analyzing in detail the areas of opportunity that can be reconsidered to create new workflows. From reevaluating who should do things, how these activities should be done, and what is necessary to wait or not, to carry them out, the idea is to shorten times and steps in the process to reach the result.

Understand what the current consumer needs in this digital environment to offer experiences that provide real solutions to their needs. An example is Uber, which has improved the process of hailing a taxi in many ways, from locating an available unit to offering new payment methods. All this through digital experiences.?

The goal here is to use digital tools, including more advanced technologies such as AI, 5G and IOT, to accelerate business growth. It is about redesigning the digital organization and operations to better serve customers. It takes time and technology, but the benefits, as measured by core KPIs, are savings in time, money, and people to solve business problems and serve customers.

3. How to attract customers??

To win customers, build brand awareness, profile customers, and simply sell online, companies must pursue digital solutions that include investing in clean data capture, marketing digital tools that include artificial intelligence to understand customers, and automated technology for an omnichannel presence.

Typically, the CMO leads this initiative and should focus on KPIs such as return on marketing investments, reducing customer acquisition costs, and generating a wealth of valuable data that can be used to acquire new customers and better serve existing customers.

4. How to face the change?

Emphasizing that the digital transformation is not the implementation of digital tools but a change in the business culture, within the roadmap to be designed we must not only include the training of the staff on the new tools with which they will work, there must also be a "re-education" about the new business model we want to be. This "re-education" must be transparent, proactive and inclusive, to make employees feel that each and every one of them is part of the new project.

One of the most significant responsibilities of the CEO or head of sales is typically leading these types of initiatives due to the significant investment requirements, agility, and most importantly, the ability to run experiments to validate the new business opportunity. The payoff is new revenue streams, but KPIs are more nuanced, usually single economic measures you're creating to solve a major customer problem and grow profitably. Most companies have these opportunities at hand, but taking advantage of them requires greater digital maturity than an IT upgrade or digitization process. This is because these opportunities often require new ways of working, new business models, and new processes.

Digital opens up many new opportunities for established businesses. Taking advantage of these opportunities requires developing the innovation and digital capabilities to test and target new sources of growth.

If you are about to start the Digital Transformation of your business, apply these recommendations! The time for innovations is now. The new norm for businesses is going digital to deliver the experiences today's consumers demand.?

Is your business part of the transformation?