A Ride Home with Digital Transformation

Here’s something they didn’t tell in Ford vs. Ferrari - sometimes cars break down. I’ll correct myself - sometimes #cars break down in traffic. I’ll correct myself again – sometimes cars break down in traffic at 8:30 PM on Mondays; when you have just enough #energy left to reach home and spend time with your family. How do I know this? My car broke down last Monday at 8:30 PM in traffic. This #story is about digital transformation.

As a first reaction to panic, I started enquiring for car towing service from people around. It didn’t take me long to understand two things:

1. There’s always more people ready to help than you can expect
2. Despite all their goodwill, they could not tell whether there was a car towing service (or any other service for that matter) outside the radius of 2 kilometers

Even if one or two people had some guesses, they didn’t have any contact information and I was in no shape to drag my car for 2km on the off-chance that there might be a help. I was about to call on the phone numbers I had and ask someone to drop me home; just when an auto-rickshaw driver suggested me something that I had completely forgotten in my apprehension. He said, and I quote, “Phone mein Google hai? Google kar lo na” (Do you have #Google in your phone? Google it). I quickly took out my phone, opened Google search app and typed in, “Car towing”. Before I could type any further, Google itself suggested, “Car towing service in my area.”. In less than 10 seconds there were 8 options for car towing services that I could get help from. Not thinking much, I picked the first one, tapped on the contact number they had mentioned and it automatically launched my caller app to connect me with the service. Within 30 minutes, a service representative named Sagar, and a towing van were at my disposal.

Guess what?  Online search platforms like Google/Justdial have helped Sagar’s employers to receive 4 confirmed leads every day. Daily, these platforms have been helping service providers to be discovered by any potential #customer. On our drive to my home, Sagar explained that his company monthly spends almost 15k in return for a #business of 1.5 to 1.8 lakhs. Thanks to online ads, their revenue has multiplied up to 10 times. On further discussion I got to know that without Google, they were lucky to have even 1 lead a day.

When you work at firms like #iauro, you hear the phrase ‘digital transformation’ day in and day out. Service providers around the globe are working hard to promote their enterprise processes to digital platforms. While we keep discussing the room for improvement for the same, we rarely get a chance to see the amount of progress it has made. Sagar’s employers don’t have a physical shop, only #digital presence. It was discoverable for anyone who happened to be in their vicinity. Even in my case, Google itself gave an autocomplete suggestion for what I was looking for. I was experiencing effects Digital Transformation even before I knew it. Moreover, you can also rate these #services along with #feedback, using online platforms. The only thing they don’t have on the #internet are their towing vans; but I’m not giving up my hopes so soon.

It’s true that a complete #digitaltransformation of businesses is a feat still far from achieved. There’s lot that needs to be worked upon including:

• Concrete long term #solutions for seamless interaction between #infrastructure and Interfaces of various systems
• Better utilization of #Data #Analytics to employ #AI and #ML in the enterprise
• Innovative alternatives to the legacy processes that are still being carried on in a large number of organizations.

But it would not be objective to discard the breakthroughs that #service providers like Sagar’s employers have made so far. Despite the gaps and indispensable offline intervention, services are advancing more and more towards digital #transformation paradigms. Strategies like #DesignThinking are helping organizations to come up with more feasible and applicable digital solutions with time. It’s just a matter of time when all major services will be promoted to digital platforms and the #thought leaders of the world will be thinking about making the online #experience better from there.

It was around 10 when I reached my home. I thanked Sagar for his services and the discussions we had. He gave me his card for #future reference (which I really hope I don’t need again). Oh also, guess how I paid for the towing service? I’ll give you a hint – It’s an online payment #app with the word ‘pay’ in its name.