Digital transformation is a growing trend for businesses all over the globe. This is not the first time you’re hearing about it, and it certainly won’t be the last. But with enough repetition, even a term we are so frequently exposed to tends to lose its’ meaning – so what exactly is digital transformation? Why is it important? And what does digital transformation mean for your business? Check out The Ultimate Digital Transformation Guide for the answers to these questions and a deeper dive into the true meaning of digital transformation.
While most businesses know they should be starting their path to digital transformation, they still don’t know why. What benefits does embracing digital transformation bring to your business? This blog aims to provide you with insight on the top 8 benefits of digital transformation as you embark on your journey.
1. Ensure Business Continuity
Staying in the loop of the latest technology is simple if you’re already taking steps in your digital transformation journey. But as we all know, technology moves quickly and it’s easy to get left behind. Blink, and you miss it. Accessing the latest tech innovation and real-time data in a secure environment is crucial to any industry, not just for the sake of keeping up but to ensure competitive advantage in today’s dynamic market. Creating a digital-forward environment also appeals to today’s digitally native workforce. By embracing digital transformation, you are not only streamlining your day-to-day operations, but you are also empowering your workforce to grow with your organization and securing your future success.
2. Secure Your Network
Embracing the digital age means taking advantage of the latest technological advancements and leveraging them to streamline how your organization functions now, and in the future. The cloud enables you to take advantage of these innovations while protecting your company data with the first line of digital defense—encryption. The increase in security concerns from 2020 to 2021 has businesses alarmed, and rightfully so. Cybersecurity risk is never going away, hackers are only getting more creative, and the amount of data circulating is rapidly increasing. Protecting your network from vulnerability today is a vital step in ensuring business continuity for tomorrow— a single network breach can have devastating results, the loss of millions of dollars and the waste of thousands of hours. By staying up to date with the latest innovations and protecting your company data, your business is better equipped to adapt to its customers’ needs and the competitive industry landscape.
3. Increase Operational Efficiencies
It’s scary to trust new technologies—especially if you’re still working on a legacy system or a point-to-point manual process model. Digital transformation enhances your business’ operational efficiencies and minimizes the complexity and time spent on integration efforts. Having the right digital tools and ensuring those tools work together will streamline your workflow and improve productivity via the automation of manual data integration. Digital transformation not only creates efficiency but fosters it in a scalable and tangible way. You could have access to the latest, most expensive technological toolkit, but at the end of the day it’s about how those tools communicate with one another and work together to streamline processes specific to your business’ needs. The implementation of a reliable system to automate your operations results in less downtime, fewer system delays, and fewer technological performance issues. By eliminating manual processes and technological hang-ups through digital automation, you enable your employees to focus on the core of their role and the mission of your business—every department reaps the benefits of digital transformation.
4. Gain Faster ROI
Money talks, and as business owners, we have to listen. The implementation of new technologies is often very costly and could take multiple years to produce a measured return on investment (ROI). Translating strategy into metrics can be challenging, but with digital transformation, come real-time insights into every facet of your business operations. Faster ROI analysis enables you to gain and access immediate impact from quick-turn deployments. You must measure the amount of new revenue credited to your just-made digital investment. It’s the only way to make sure digital transformation is actually worth it. We know it is, but don’t just take our word for it, run the numbers yourself.
5. Scale as Your Business Grows
There is a common misconception that the digital transformation initiative only applies to enterprise-size companies and is not attainable for smaller businesses. This couldn’t be more wrong—by bundling digital transformation tools together, you can save and scale as your business grows. Legacy systems that weren’t created to scale become a barrier, resulting in lost opportunities and costly re-platforming while giving your competitors the chance to get ahead. Bundling digital tools together creates a powerful, yet cost-effective, toolkit that scales in tandem with your business.
6. Streamline Communication
Communication is key – no, really. It is. An effective digital transformation toolkit includes tools that streamline the various lines of communication in your organization, whether that communication is between your systems, your employees, to your customers, or partners.
By integrating your systems, you are changing the way they communicate with one another and how that information is then communicated to you. Your data is centralized and updated in real time and everyone is working off the same information, unlocking your full business potential. This means you can decrease blind spots, break down silos, eliminate delays in information transfers and easily identify bottlenecks. Communication speed and quality can play a determining role in your business’s longevity. When the communication between your systems is seamless it is reflected in the communication to your customer, whether that be through step-by-step order tracking, recall notifications or customer service. Because you’re working from a sole source of truth, all the information you need is in a single place—fostering collaboration between your teams internally and streamlining communications with your customers.
7. Enhance Customer Experience
With new players entering your market space every day, your customers are being presented with an assorted menu of customer journeys. Communication is just one of the areas of that journey that is directly impacted by digital transformation. Many businesses position themselves as customer-centric, but it’s challenging to focus on your customers’ needs when you haven’t defined what those are. Those needs get even harder to define when they are constantly shifting—this is where timely insights into consumer trends and sales history come in. Predictive forecasting and analytics help you plan your operations for the future by learning from the past, ensuring you deliver what your customers need, when they need it. Customer service is a major component of the customer experience and is often a deciding factor between competitors.
8. Roll with the Punches
2020 was a curveball, to say the least. Some things you simply can’t see coming. But, what you can do is make sure your business is properly geared to take on whatever tomorrow brings.
The ability to pivot and to do so quickly is becoming a necessity for any business. Increased disruption and market turbulence create opportunity for error in every step of the supply chain. Being prepared for the future is critical for any operation, but getting prepared is where digital transformation comes in. Digital transformation means you have the tools to tackle the industry as it is today and the challenges that tomorrow may bring without the anxiety of uncertainty. You can scale your business and roll with the punches, and you can do it easily. Because with digital transformation, you already have everything you need. Get Ready for What’s Next, Now.