Improve your business with DX
Digital transformation is the process of adopting digital technologies into your business processes to provide more value to your end customer. While it may sound like tech jargon, it’s actually an important part of business growth. Learn how digital transformation can help improve your business operations and increase customer satisfaction.
Technological improvements are a way of life - things are optimised and improved for efficiency or ease of use. This type of improvement also happens digitally. Software can help establish efficient processes and streamlined workflows. This is commonly known as digital transformation.
When you improve processes using software, you want to be thoughtful about how this tool will affect your team. Otherwise, you can end up with too many tools and notifications to sort through which can affect your team’s focus. Implementing a digital transformation strategy can help your team focus on providing value to your customer, instead of wading through several different tools. In this article, learn more about digital transformation and how you can use it to help bring more value to your business.
Digital transformation is the act of implementing digital technologies to business processes in a way that enhances how your business operates.
By improving your operations, you can then deliver more value to your customers. The term “digital transformation” is so widely used that many people think it’s just business jargon. However, digital transformation is an important concept for business leaders to understand.
The goal of digital transformation isn’t just to add new technologies into your business randomly, it’s to strategically add technologies that will bring your end customers more value than what your team is currently providing. The goal is improvement, not maintaining the status quo.
Examples of digital transformation in the workplace
Here are a few examples of how teams can implement digital transformation:
HR Team: An HR team transitions from sending out traditional paper forms to sign offer letters and paperwork to a new digital agreement software to decrease the amount of time spent between the interview and onboarding process.
IT Department: An IT team implements a digital ticketing platform system to react to bugs and customer service issues more quickly.
Project management team: A project management team implements a new digital project management software to help house all of the important information in one place. This way, stakeholders can access the information they need when they need it.
Digital transformation looks different for every company, and subsequently this also means that there’s no one set strategy to implement digital transformation. That’s ok. The important thing is to approach the process thoughtfully and systematically. Here’s how.
How to begin the digital transformation process
Similar to most project planning processes, the first step in the digital transformation process is goal setting. What are the goals you are trying to achieve by starting this digital transformation journey? Are you looking to reimagine your customer’s user experience? Or are you looking to target something that focuses more on business needs? Is there anything in your overarching business strategy that you could achieve by implementing a digital transformation?
Setting digital transformation goals
The best goals are quantifiable - and goals for your digital transformation are no exception. Try using a goal setting methodologies like the SMART goal methodology,OKRs, or problem framing. This helps you identify your digital transformation strategy and gives your team the opportunity to understand and define what the goal is for this specific project.
It’s important to note that customers may not always notice the effects of your digital transformation process. Sometimes the end result are things that are invisible to the end customers - like faster loading times or shorter shipping timelines. The best way to understand if your digital transformation strategy worked is by monitoring your business success metrics.
Using change management to implement digital transformation
As you begin crafting your digital transformation initiative, consider how this change will affect not only your customers, but also the employees responsible for implementing it. Making large, company wide changes can come with resistance from employees - you can prevent this from happening by having a solid change management strategy in place before pushing the change into action.
If you’re looking to make a change that will drastically affect your customers, consider rolling out a small pilot program to test how they will react. Working with valued customers to gain early feedback can help your team get a better understanding of what your customers are looking for, and how to best provide them value.