Digital Transformation for UK SMEs

Digital Transformation is a much-hyped buzzword do what does it mean for UK SMEs turning over between ￡4M-￡15M?

This is by no means a comprehensive article on the topic but covers some of the basics for those exploring what it means for their businesses.

What is Digital Transformation?

In short: business change through the adoption or creation of emerging technology

Who is it for?

Often mis-represented as aimed at Enterprise (>1000 employees) Digital Transformation is applicable and accessible for any organisation.

Typically business going through transformations have been operating for at least 5 years.

Why Digitally Transform?

In a nutshell; to drive business growth via improved profit margins, increased efficiency and productivity, to retain/win/upsell more clients by leveraging technology in a way that differentiates and offers a higher calibre of valuable services (and a greater variety) to clients.

The Problem

As businesses age and grow they adopt work management systems (like Microsoft365, Google Workspace), new ways of working, new people, SaaS and other technology products. As a result, business processes are often not well captured and there is an inefficient flow of information.?The result?

• Duplication of work
• Human error
• Failed projects
• Data loss / lack of insight

Paper trails, email, CRM data, Excel spreadsheets and documents flying around inside and outside of an organisation compound the challenges businesses face.

The impact can vary but often errors are passed to clients with a knock to company reputation, a lot of manual process and workforce time wasted to double and triple check items.

Company bottomlines often take a hit, perhaps unnecessarily.

How does an SME go about Digitally Transforming?

CTOs, IT Directors, Innovation Directors and heads of technology are often tasked with digital strategy and transformation. Many of these are already operating at 100% working on day to day activities vital for the business.

My suggestion is reach out to your network for trusted technology consultants and get their opinion on the first steps.?Alternatively keep up with the research! Here is an interesting article from Salesforce aimed at SMEs. https://www.salesforce.com/uk/blog/2021/06/digital-transformation-challenges-smes-uk.html

Ultimately, whatever you do it is important to have a technology strategy and have the right internal and external people to help execute it. This strategy will almost certainly look closely at your existing business processes that need to be comprehensively understood and captured so that any technological adoption can automate the flow of information and support staff in the execution of their work.?Further every vertical has industry specific software packages like ‘Autodesk’ Construction or ‘SAP for banking’ as well as industry agnostic packages like ERP and CRM systems (Salesforce, Hubspot etc). Digital strategy will need to look closely at how and why a business is using software, what users are doing with it in order to understand whether to integrate, configure, build out or terminate.

Do more with less. If a machine can do something, then let it do it so that your people’s time is free to work on those activities that only humans can do e.g. sales and customer success. Purchasing off the shelf software, like SaaS tools, is often seen as low risk and low investment. After all you can cancel anytime, right?! Potentially, although experience tells us that using the wrong tools can make problems worse. By the time staff are trained an using new systems the business can get tied in. Then a realisation can come when the tools are not fit for purpose or, after configuration and new model purchasing, are costing a lot more than originally planned. Then getting out of contracts or moving away can be very hard.

So, purchase off the shelf where possible but make sure it’s the right solution. It can be a good idea to explore bespoke digital innovations. They often come with more upfront cost, but over time are specifically built to capture your business processes, your flow of information and developed to meet your business objectives.

Digital transformations can start small or deliberately planned to be years in length. There are also a host of specialists (and indeed generalists), and subject matter experts, that you can call on depending on what level and type of transformation you shoot for. e.g. Data scientists, business strategists, change consultants, software developers, innovation practitioners, knowledge management, CX consultants, business analysts etc.

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