What is digital transformation
Digital transformation is the application of digital technologies to create new business models. Often the goal is to solve business weaknesses, improve efficiencies, and deliver a more personalized customer experience.
Digital transformation is based on the idea that digital tools, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions, can benefit every area of the business. In other words, these tools can help companies improve their processes and culture in order to remain competitive and relevant.
What is the difference between digital transformation and digitization
Digitization is the conversion of analogy data to digital, i.e. moving from the stage of paper to the computer, while digital digital transformation is a process of changing the structure of companies, and is related to the use of technology and facilities of the digital medium to modify internal and external processes, and improve the customer experience.
This transformation is not just limited to companies that sell digital products or focus on the Internet and technology, but it affects all industries and departments.
Advantages of digital transformation
One of the main advantages of digital transformation is eliminating tasks that unnecessarily waste employees' time. By implementing digital technology, you can use software to perform tasks that were previously performed manually by employees. Business process automation is often seen as a stepping stone towards a more inclusive digital transformation, but it can also be one of the outcomes.
Increase customer satisfaction by improving customer experience
Automating these tasks also improves the experiences of customers and employees as they will see much faster response times when they have an inquiry. One of the advantages of digital transformation is enabling customers to access your services and support via their preferred method of interaction.
By taking advantage of digital tools, you can enable multi-channel support, allowing customers to communicate by phone, live chat on the web, email, mobile app, or through a support forum. By keeping it entirely digital, companies can provide multiple touch points, track interactions, facilitate follow-ups, and gather feedback from customers.
Similarly, organizations can use digital tools and processes to facilitate customer access to their services via e-commerce, mobile platforms, social media, and other digital avenues. Not only do customers benefit from accessing services via their preferred channel, but businesses can also suggest other relevant offers, products or services using the data attached to their accounts.
These are the processes that can be built and refined once the company manages these aspects through digital technology and can be improved based on your customers' actual experience.
Make improved and effective decisions through real-time data collection
Software-focused digital operations open up a level of visibility into what is working well and what can be improved. Since all data is stored digitally, often in real time, it makes recognizing patterns and identifying opportunities for improvements a lot easier.
Central data warehouses can be mined to gain insights into where bottlenecks are in workflow, which surface the most, employee performance, customer preferences and behaviour, and many other areas. Once a company uses digital tools and develops processes around it, it is much easier to produce reports and identify areas for improvement as opposed to traditional surveying, sampling, and collecting feedback manually.
Reduce risks at work
As organizations continue to grow, the technology and processes you've relied on for your years can start to frustrate them. From a technical standpoint, it can be difficult to back up, maintain, and protect data inside legacy systems. This could make them more likely to fail or an easier target for cybercriminals. From the McKinsey report, Digital Risk: Transforming Risk Management for the Decade 2020, they claim: “Improving the efficiency and effectiveness of existing risk management approaches, digital risk initiatives can reduce operating costs for risk activities by 20 to 30 percent.” when hiring