All businesses need to embrace digital transformation in order to succeed. Whether your business is a small startup, mid-sized enterprise or a large corporation, you will not survive and remain competitive without it.
In general, digital transformation is the integration of digital technologies into all aspects of a business. The process requires fundamental changes to how businesses operate and provide value to customers. It’s a cultural change that impacts every level of employee, from the CEO downward.
It is critical to create a digital transformation strategy to define the steps required to succeed in the digital world. The strategy will help to bridge the current state of your business and the desired long-term plan. The strategy should address several areas that are related to information, data, processes, technologies, human aspects and much more.
What Role Does Organization Culture Play in Digital Transformation?
Digital transformation is a journey that affects all employees; however, without the total acceptance and buy-in of top level executives, it is doomed for failure. It’s a cultural change that requires the entire organization to constantly challenge the status quo, experiment and take risks, and expect to fail sometimes.
Management must acknowledge that digital transformation is necessary and that they need to evolve, as well. They need to support the process and embrace new practices, some of which are in a constant state of flux.
One of the challenges in introducing innovations to companies is that many executives already believe their companies are more advanced than they really are. According to a recent research project with CapGemini, “The Digital Culture Gap,” 75% of senior executives believe their organizations have a culture of innovation, but only 37% of employees feel the same. The report also states that only 7% of organizations can test, learn and deploy new ideas rapidly.
Advantages of Digital Transformation
Digital technology is not going away. The process of digital transformation is by no means a simple undertaking; however, businesses have little choice but to get on the bandwagon. There are many benefits to digital transformation; we’ve listed what we consider the top 5 here.
1. Enhanced Customer Experience
The digital transformation process will help you better understand your customer’s journey and behaviors. It will allow you to choose the right technology and tools to collect contact information, website behavior and customer preferences. You’ll be able to better engage with your customers and as a result, their satisfaction, trust and retention will grow.
2. Increased Efficiency
Innovative solutions that will be uncovered and implemented through the digital transformation process will allow the workforce to perform smarter, faster and more productively. It will be easier for everyone to collaborate and communicate, and facilitate sharing data. This will encourage teamwork that will enable employees to be more efficient and effective in completing their tasks.
3. Improved Decision Making
With data comes power. The digital transformation process will give you access to more data by providing the tools and processes to make better decisions. The flow of data will allow you to gain immediate insights and react faster and more accurately than before.
4. Wider Reach
A natural progression of the digital transformation process is to provide access to your business website and other applications from any device. You’re available to your customers almost any time, any place.
5. Greater Profitability
The result of providing a better customer experience, increasing efficiency, improving decision making and reaching a wider audience is improving your company’s bottom line. Digital Transformation will impact your overall profitability.
What’s the Next Step?
It can be overwhelming just thinking about embarking on a digital transformation journey. E3 Consulting can help your business through the process!
With over 30 years of experience in business process automation, project management, technology consulting, sales and marketing consulting, among others, we can help you develop a digital transformation strategy to get you started. We can also work with you during the process to remove any roadblocks and resolve issues you may encounter.
Depend on the professionals at E3 Consulting to help you succeed and remain competitive in the digital world. Call us at (732) 735-6429 or send us a message and we’ll get back with you as soon as possible.