How Digital Transformation is the key to unlock your 'business potential'?

Digital transformation is changing the way we live our lives. It is changing the way we do everything, every day. From buying groceries to watching television, and from reading books to driving a car, digital transformation is leaving its impact on everything we do. Its huge influence on our lives is all too visible. And one thing is clear —digital transformation is here to stay.

But ask yourself—are you keeping up with this fast-paced change? Are you letting yourself flow with the tide or are you trying to hold on to every rock amongst the rapids to stop yourself? Are you embracing the change or are you trying to grab every excuse that comes in your way, lamenting the fact that times, they are a-changin? More than that, are you changing for the better, making sure that the change is profiting you? Are you making sure that it is profiting your business? If it isn’t, you need to buckle up, because you are then missing out on a lot by ignoring Digital Transformation.

But, what exactly is Digital Transformation? Digital transformation is the integration of digital technology into all areas of business, fundamentally changing how you operate and deliver value to customers. It's also a cultural change that requires organizations to continually challenge the status quo, experiment, and get comfortable with failure. According to author Greg Verdino, “Digital transformation closes the gap between what digital customers already expect and what analog businesses actually deliver.” The definition from The Agile Elephant states that: “Digital transformation involves a change in leadership, different thinking, the encouragement of innovation and new business models, incorporating digitization of assets and increased use of technology to improve the experience of your organization’s employees, customers, suppliers, partners, and stakeholders.”

Now you might think, ‘My business is going on pretty well as it is, I don’t need any transformation—digital or otherwise’. But then you are wrong. Digital transformation can unlock your business to reach heights you never thought that it ever could. Here are a few reasons that aptly illustrate how going digital will help your business prosper, and ignoring digital transformation will certainly enable your competitors to overtake your current business: 

1. Your competitors are doing it, and you need to catch up. According to a Forrester Research report, executives predict that nearly half of their revenue will be driven by digital by the year 2020. Also, 53% of companies have a comprehensive transformation roadmap that includes business capabilities and processes, as well as digital and IT components (Source: Global Digital IQ Survey, PWC, 2015). The IDC research ‘FutureScape: Worldwide Digital Transformation 2018 Predictions’ reported, “By the end of 2019, digital transformation spending will reach $1.7 trillion worldwide, a 42% increase from 2017.”
2.  It will make you more profitable. In a Gartner survey, “56% said that their digital improvements have already improved profits.”
3. It will increase your efficiency. Research shows, “Nine out of 10 IT decision-makers claim legacy systems are preventing them from harnessing the digital technologies they need to grow and become more efficient.”
4. Your customers, as well as employees, will be glad. Whether external customers, or internal employees, people already depend on digital platforms for a majority of the things that they do. From buying groceries online to reading e-books, your customers, as well as employees, have already largely adopted digital practices in all facets of their lives. For all you know, they are probably waiting for your business to catch up.

So, you need to apply the principles of digital transformation to your business, and you need to do it now. 85% enterprise decision makers feel they have a time-frame of two years to make significant inroads on their digital transformations, or they will suffer financially and fall behind their competitors (Source: Are Businesses Really Digitally Transforming Or Living In Digital Denial, Progress, 2016).

The best example of a popular brand relying on digital transformation to increase sales and customer satisfaction would be Amazon. They are a company which attaches great value to consumers data and keeps innovating to create a new market for their product and services. The best known of these would be launching Kindle. Kindle is a perfect composition of digitalization mixed with comfort for consumers, and the result of this is customer satisfaction as well as greater revenue for the company. The introduction, and the subsequent success, of Amazon Echo, is also an amazing step towards digital transformation. Also, the company has taken to delivering orders through drones, which brings with it lesser delivery time, as well as better customer satisfaction, because isn’t the prospect of getting your online order delivered by a drone— and that too, right at your home —thrilling?

The process of digital transformation consists of three main stages:

1. Digitization: The Conversion of analog information into digital form (i.e. numeric, binary format). For the business to start working digitally, the first step would be to convert all the information into a digital format. That is what digitization is. Digitization is the process of converting information into a digital (that is, computer-readable) format, in which the information is organized into ‘bits’.
2. Digitalization: The Process of the technologically-induced change within the industries. Digitalization is linked to holistic views on business and social change, horizontal organizational and business development, through Information Technology.
3. Digital Transformation: The Effect : the total and overall societal effect of digitalization which results in better opportunities to transform and change existing business models, consumption patterns, socio-economic structures, legal and policy measures, organizational patterns, cultural barriers, etc.

By now, you would surely have recognized the importance of applying and incorporating digital transformation in your business. So how do you go about incorporating digital transformation in your business? How do you do it the right way? How do you not go wrong somewhere? Do not let these questions worry you because we have the perfect solution to this problem—Wop Innovation Suite for Entrepreneurs.

A lot of new entrepreneurs have fantastic ideas and have a vision, but giving the vision a form requires a real time execution. Here’s where WOP.company comes to your rescue. We listen, we understand and we help you innovate!