Whether you own an SME or run a startup, the digital transformation process always remains inevitable. It aims at converting your company and its assets digitally in a holistic way to boost productivity. Digital transformation technologies including AI, IoT, and big data are highly promising and capable of transforming your business processes to ensure growth. But then, some companies may face challenges in transforming processes digitally. In this article, we will highlight these challenges and share noteworthy tips to create a digital transformation roadmap effectively.
However, before discussing digital transformation strategies, it is better to understand the concept of digital transformation. It is an ongoing process and involves both operational and cultural changes. Let’s define digital transformation and its importance for modern enterprises.
What is Digital Transformation and Why is it important?
Digital transformation is an umbrella term for a holistic approach of transforming business processes. In layman’s terms, digital transformation consists of digital technologies that make various operations more efficient. Here it is fair to mention that digital transformation technologies do not replicate the existing services digitally but transform these services into more productive and efficient form. Digital transformation is a long and complicated process that requires careful planning and seamless execution at every level.
Though all industry sectors can get the benefits of digital transformation, its implementation method is different based on business models and industry segments. Digital transformation can improve customer experience, enhance overall services, and bring phenomenal change in the company’s culture. We can certainly expect that the digital transformation process will get more advanced with inclusion of some hyped-up topics like metaverse, blockchain, and digital currencies over the period. Let’s dig deep into the necessity of digital transformation for enterprises.
Why is Digital Transformation Needed?
Digital transformation offers many benefits to thriving enterprises irrespective of their industry sectors. Here we give the list of some of the biggest reasons why your company requires digital transformation.
1. Your Employees Need Modern Tools
These days, feature-rich and user-friendly tools are available for handling various operations with ease. For example, remote assistance tools can help your remote workers get the support from technicians as and when necessary, advanced ERP software can assist your sales team to get the real-time data to convince customers, etc. Digital transformation brings automation and enables your employees to focus more on productive activities. Your employees also remain happy as they can get rid of performing repetitive tasks daily.
2. Your Corporate Data Needs Security
Most entrepreneurs tend to give top priority to data security these days. Even a digital transformation roadmap needs to consider this factor for ensuring safety of confidential data. It is necessary for enterprises to implement the security-related strategy across the entire network and all business applications to prevent any cyberattack or threats. What’s more, many companies have opted for remote or hybrid working patterns in the post-pandemic period. There, it is of utmost importance for companies to safeguard the corporate data through digital transformation.
3. Your Customers Need Excellent Services
In today’s competitive age, tech-savvy customers expect flawless services and rich digital experience from your company. Whether they are internal or external customers, you need to deliver on-demand services with agile networking capability. Big data and IoT can assist you to achieve this objective with the help of machine learning technology. In a way, digital transformation remains handy in improving services for both employees and customers of your company.
4. Your Partners Need Effective Operations
Effective communication, streamlined workflow, and timely execution of processes are imperative for maintaining high efficiency and productivity of core business operations. Your partners and stakeholders have some expectations regarding your business, and the digital transformation process assists you to fulfil these expectations. You can bridge the communication gap to improve collaboration and your employees can remain more focused every day. As a result, you can grab partnership opportunities while strengthening existing partnerships.
5. Your Company Needs Real-time Decisions
One of the biggest reasons why you should opt for the digital transformation process is the need to make insightful decisions in real time. Thanks to AI and big data technologies, you can get actionable insights as and when necessary. The right set of analytical tools can assist you to convert the massive amount of data into valuable information for making meaningful decisions quickly. The AI technology facilitates you to get the advantage of predictive analytics for making more accurate decisions for the future.
Companies can leverage all these benefits by implementing digital transformation strategies properly. Here are the top strategies you can utilise for ensuring effective digital transformation.
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Top Digital Transformation Strategies You Need to Consider in 2023
A digital transformation strategy is an all-inclusive approach to make the enterprise ready to integrate technology into the existing business system. It aims at achieving higher efficiency and increased collaboration for improving quality and customer experience. Here are the top strategies you need to consider for making the digital transformation successful.
Leverage Digital Technologies Effectively
Increase Budget for R&D
Hire Competitive Talents
Focus on Cyber security
Think of User-friendliness
Use Data Analytics for Measurement
It all starts with the roadmap or planning to leverage technological advancements effectively. Digital transformation strategy should be capable of bringing your company and its business model closer to people. Your external and internal customers should get the benefits of digital technologies. You can use project management and time-tracking tools to make your digital transformation process successful.
Research and development are at the core of digital transformation. You need to increase the budget for R&D to increase the chance to come up with more innovative solutions. As per the PwC research report, globally, 45 percent of executives expect that their revenues will grow within the next five years after incorporating digital transformation. But, effective transformation needs capitalization and more effort on R&D.
It is fair to mention that diverse talents across the IT domains like DevOps, UX, data science, and AI can work wonders in developing high-end digital transformation solutions. Even if you do not have talented resources, you can hire dedicated professionals with niche skills as per your digital transformation project requirements. Getting the right people for a proper execution is an essential factor to consider in digital transformation strategy.
It is essential to give security a priority. Whenever you make a roadmap for digital transformation initiative, you need to keep the focus on data security. As enterprise software contains sensitive data and remains vulnerable to breaches or cyber attacks, you need to consider security-related aspects in the strategy. Regular changing of passwords and addition of ad blocker in the browser are some of the most effective ways to ensure security.
Your digital business system should be capable of handling daily tasks effectively and reduce the struggles of employees through automation. User-friendly digital transformation solutions can save a lot of time, effort, and money for your company. Such solutions should be efficient, easy to install, easy to operate, and free from the need of any third-party software. Also, they should follow all the set standards.
Apart from this, you need to make a roadmap to involve all the stakeholders and employees of your company. It is because digital transformation is not only a technical or digital change but also cultural change. Participation of every employee can make the overall process swift, seamless, and secure for your company.
How to Create a Digital Transformation Roadmap for Your Company
Here are the key steps to consider for creating a powerful digital transformation roadmap.
• Define Goals and Vision
Your destination should be clear before initiating the digital transformation journey. Therefore, you should identify requirements and goals prior to making a roadmap.
• Set KPIs
The SMART (Specific Measurable Achievable Relevant Time-based) framework is useful for setting KPIs. You can measure the impact of digital transformation based on these KPIs.
• Involve People and Determine Accountability
It is better to involve all the employees and establish accountability of these stakeholders while making a digital transformation roadmap.
• Map Resources
While making a plan, it is necessary to break the entire process into a series of mini projects because digital transformation is a vast and complex process. Apart from these steps, you can keep the provision for regular analysis and inviting feedback for effective execution.
Common Challenges of Digital Transformation
Though the digital transformation process is a game-changer for your enterprise, you need to overcome certain challenges to make the most of it. Here we mention top four challenges to address while implementing digital transformation.
• Customization
The digital transformation process should maintain the unique strategic framework of any enterprise. The solution should be customizable to meet this challenge.
• Security
All sensitive and confidential data should be secured effectively. It is always a big challenge to safeguard the strategy and other information from competitors.
• Real-time Reporting
This is the most common challenge for enterprises. All the information should be accessible in real-time to know the company’s standing in regards to digital transformation strategy.
• Automation in Monitoring
Tracking the changes and the progress of KPIs is cumbersome if done manually. But, automation of monitoring is also challenging and companies need to deal with it.
Concluding Lines
Digital transformation has become a necessity for thriving enterprises. Hope this detailed guide will assist you to make an effective roadmap for the digital transformation process. However, it is always beneficial to consult a reputed digital transformation services provider to make the process successful in terms of achieving business goals.
At Silver Touch, we assist our global clientele to get ready for the future with the next-gen IT solutions. Our in-house team of experienced professionals implement the 4P methodology (People, Process, Portfolio, Platform) to meet your business requirements in line with market dynamics. Just drop us a line at info@silvertouch.com to know more about our services and solutions.
