Digital Transformation 101

Simply put, Digital Transformation is reimagining and realigning the application of innovative digital technologies, to invent new digital business models, enhance existing or create new digital processes that can simplify or automate business operations, and deliver greater value to consumers.

Rise in Digital Transformation over the last few years and impact of Covid

Now that we’ve understood what digital transformation is, let's look at some data that shows the increase in interest over time and how the pandemic has expedited the adoption of digital at organizational and industry levels by years with a potential long-term impact.

Read our blog on the impact of digital transformation on SMEs

There is a steady increase in interest over the last five years (google trends dated May 2021)

Source: https://trends.google.com/

Rise in Interest in digital transformation in a post-pandemic world. (google trends dated May 2021)

Source: https://trends.google.com/

Digital Culture Shift in Organizations

In a social distancing world, where interactions with employees and customers are mostly virtual, operating digitally is the only option forcing businesses to move from offline to online. Organizations that already had a digital strategy in place were able to bounce back more quickly than traditional organizations.

Digital Culture Shift in Customers

With physical stores being shut down even customer behavior has seen a shift. Customers that were historically reluctant to go digital have moved to online shopping, digital payments, etc.

Digital Platform Shift

Businesses in different industries are trying digital platforms. Example Industries like education and fitness have heavily moved to online classes with live or pre-recorded sessions.

Increase in Digital Content Consumption

The pandemic has also changed the social media, entertainment consumption habits of users with an increase of up to 80% making it an even more important tool for brands to digitally market their products and services and interact with their customers to gain new customers, increase customer loyalty and retention.

This will create a long-term positive impact in organizations across industries with an increased need for digital-physical integration to future-proof their business in a digitally competitive environment to maintain and grow market share and meet their customers’ needs.

Read our blog on how organizations can adapt to digital and essential tools for remote team management

Operational Efficiency - Digital transformation helps streamline processes and automate manual tasks, resulting in increased speed, reduced wastage of time and resources with more focus on strategy and revenue generation.

Data-Driven Decision Making - Most businesses collect data on their customers but don’t leverage the potential value of the data. Digital transformation helps create a data collection system across various touchpoints and translate it into actionable insights on customer experience and operational efficiency.

Increased Agility & Productivity - Digital transformation promotes a flexible culture for adopting improved strategies with the right tech tools to streamline workflows, automate manual processes, integrating data-driven decision making within an organization empowering it to be more agile and productive.

Enhanced customer experiences - Digital transformation provides insights on the shift in demand, emerging customer needs from existing customer data allowing businesses to personalize marketing, prepare for customer needs.

All these advantages put together in a business lead to reduced cost, increased sales, and ROI. Read our blog on the digital transformation in the current market and trends shaping digital transformation in 2021 and beyond

70% of Customer interactions will involve innovative emerging technologies by 2022

87% of Business leaders consider digitalization is a company priority

40% of the organizations have brought digital initiatives to scale

Source - gartner.com

These stats make it very clear digital is the way to go to keep up with the customers’ needs, but there is also a huge gap between the planning and execution of digital transformation strategies in organizations

Myth - Digital Transformation does not create any tangible results
Fact - It improves operational efficiency and enhances customer experience. According to McKinsey companies that have adopted digital transformation have seen an increase in their turnover by 20% and reduce costs by 36%.

Myth - Digital Transformation is complex and only about technology
Fact - It is really about adopting a digital mindset to achieve your business objectives and growth amid evolving digital expectations of customers, employees, and partners

Myth - Digital Transformation is an expensive process
Fact - It is a key investment to reduce cost and attain a higher ROI.

While there is obviously no “one-size-fits-all” approach to digitization and a unique digital transformation journey is required at an industry or organizational level, here are a few things to consider that can guide your digital transformation journey.

Have a clear actionable transformation objective - The purpose of the digital initiative will anchor the entire transformation journey, the foundation of the next steps for business growth, and its impact. It is very important to be purpose-driven, work towards a cultural shift, and not just ad-hoc tech innovation.

Redefine your Digital Strategy - This is where you look at your digital strategy and evaluate the digital maturity of your organization in tandem with the objective of your transformation objective, here are the different stages of digital maturity

Exploration - Leveraging traditional technology in isolated departments and projects.

Expanding - Testing and expanding digital technologies in isolated departments and projects.

Adapting - Leveraging advanced digital technologies for synchronized efforts in business operations and customer management.

Digitized - Digital Cultural Shift and Digitally optimize business operations and customer management.

Prioritize digital initiatives that help in achieving your transformation objective, make your organization more digitally mature while adding value to your end customers.

Craft a Digital Business Model - With everything moving from offline to online in the post-pandemic world, reimagine and implement digital capabilities for business operations to build flexibility and create various digital touchpoints to engage with your customers with consideration of the value these digital capabilities can create

Build an adaptable and agile culture - With a continually evolving business and digital climate, businesses need to be prepared to quickly adapt and adjust course. While selecting digital initiatives, it is better if the technology is adaptable and easily implementable.

Digital transformation has widely been adopted in different industries like fashion, finance, hospitality, healthcare, retail, telecom, transport, and education, etc, Let’s look at a few examples use cases in different industries

Digital Transformation in Fashion - Fashion trends come and go but one trend that isn’t going anywhere in the fashion industry is digital innovation. With the new normal there is a decline in offline purchase intent and a hike in digital sales. This makes it very important for businesses in fashion to leverage digital capabilities like Virtual Trial rooms to enhance user experience and AI for smart, personalized, automated, and data-driven marketing

Digital Transformation in Finance - Digital transformation in the finance industry has exponentially improved the operational efficiency and customer experience with digital capabilities like asset and wealth trackers that gather and use data on users’ spending habits and display them in real-time insights and recommendations powered by AI, convenient and quick payment methods, risk assessment and management dashboard for businesses, etc.

Businesses must have a digital strategy in place to sustain in a highly competitive market and grow their business. Finding the right technology partner is very important to make informed decisions and high-quality and timely execution. At doodleblue we provide a dedicated team of technology experts to work as an extension of your internal team. Contact us now!