The latest technologies change consumer expectations, question norms, and pressurize companies to respond. The pace can be perplexing. For organizations expecting to stay serviceable, a decisively indicative test is agility, adaptivity, and modernization.
This provides a starting point for understanding the digital transformation journey better. Digital transformation, or digitalization, is a set of processes that redefines and improves current and new methods and customer experiences.
A growing number of global businesses are embracing digitalization as it helps them remain adaptable, relevant, and competitive amid a shifting landscape. The global digital transformation industry is expected to surpass $7.03 billion by 2032.
This post will cover some key things to consider for businesses hoping to redefine their approach to customer strategy, consolidate processes, boost agility, and streamline their services and products through digital change.
5 things to consider for successful digitalization
The latest Gartner study reveals that 66% of leaders have plans for digitalization, but just 11% are delivering digital business in reality. The reason for these poor outcomes is that the majority of them are unclear about where and how to begin.
If you happen to be one of those, keep reading the following five things to experience a successful digital transformation.
Begin with a strategy and a result-focused approach
In this day and age, companies are repeatedly getting pushed to give famous strategies, systems, and technologies a shot that promises them higher profit, operational efficiencies, and so much more. If truth be told, there is no set roadmap for going digital that works for each company – it has to be an approach tailored to your organization, as well as the existing situation.
So, instead of jumping on the bandwagon, it is crucial to begin by knowing your business objectives and developing certain strategies to help you achieve them. Strategic planning centered around the outcomes is important to a successful change.
Determine which operations need digitization before others and find out the platforms, solutions, and applications that suit your company culture, current workflows, and budget. Building a roadmap and an all-embracing framework for a plan will guide your transformation journey and ensure everybody is on the same page.
Engage digital-savvy leaders
Next on our list is the need to involve the right leaders in the digital transformation process. Digital maturity correlates with powerful leadership, which sets the tone for the top-down effort that digitization demands.
McKinsey & Company’s study reveals that companies that involved a chief digital officer (CDO) to support their change were 1.6 times more successful with digitalization.
People meant to be a part of the top team should be well-informed about digital technology to achieve successful transformation.
As per Forbes, a digitally mature leader should have a defined motive in introducing technologies into the company, progressive thinking to identify opportunities, an understanding of optimizing less-efficient systems to their maximum, consideration for newness and experimentation, and readiness to embrace partnership opportunities that support the business’s end objectives.
Keep an eye on the right technologies
After investigating the business’ needs, seniors should start looking for the right technologies and tools important to support their change journey. Investing in the most suitable solutions helps companies avoid unnecessary losses in the long run.
Cloud-based technology is mandatory in digitalization as it provides organizations with agility, scalability, and flexibility. An increasing number of industries are shifting workloads, including mission-critical tools and sensitive data, to the public cloud.
In addition, artificial intelligence and machine learning are incorporated into several high-end technologies, like smart devices, natural language processors, computer vision, and voice assistants, for automating tasks and making quicker decisions. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is another latest technology that uses AI to drive digital transformation.
What’s more, as per a recent survey, 29% of CEOs believe that mobile technology is the second most crucial technology for digitalization. Mobile VPN is taking the lead in handling the problems companies encounter during the change process. These VPNs use operators’ 4G and 5G networks to provide on-demand and direct private networks for organizations.
Digitize operations and processes
Next to choosing the suitable technology is optimizing, simplifying, and rationalizing the current processes. This means exchanging analog operations with digital ones in their most general form.
However, at times, it involves rearchitecting the system to meet the requirements of present customers to serve them better. A good example is PayPal, which used to send payments through email. Due to the omnipresence of instant payments in today’s market, PayPal was re-architectured by conjoining individual divisions into a single entity.
In all, digitizing processes is a fundamental rock for successful digitalization since, without it, your organization will be left behind by more efficient companies. Digitizing and rearchitecting processes lead to more transformational possibilities.
Promote a culture of communication
Clear and constant communication between the project management, strategic, technical, and marketing teams across all levels is vital at the time of digital transformation.
Throughout the process, it is a must to ensure that the advantages of and the reasons behind going digital are continually communicated among all stakeholders. Teams must communicate with each other the importance of adapting the culture to the new program and of preparing the staff in advance through training sessions.
Everyone must understand where the organization is headed, why it is considering the shift, and why the changes matter. Research shows that companies following this practice will likely experience three times more successful transformation.
Another useful tip to follow is to adopt digital solutions that make communication easier and information more accessible across the organization.
In conclusion
Embracing digitalization does not have to be a struggle. You need to have a clear picture of where your company stands, what it wants, and the overall impact of near-term and long-term decisions, an understanding of your vulnerabilities and risks, assemble a digitalization master plan before embarking on change projects, and maximize your resources and bring in the right expertise at the right time to generate positive business outcomes.
