How to Boost Your Business Reputation with Digital Transformation
What is Digital Transformation?
Simply put, Digital Transformation (DT or DX) is the adoption of digital technology and capabilities to transform services, processes, products, assets or businesses, through replacing non-digital or manual processes with digital processes or replacing older digital technology with newer digital technology to enhance customer value and manage risk; the term is widely used in public-sector organizations to refer to modest initiatives such as putting services online or legacy modernization.
How Do Technological Advances Influence Digital Transformation and Customer Expectations?
It’s safe to say that 2020 changed the world in more ways than one and next-gen technology has transformed human existence drastically since the Industrial Age propelled society out of the Dark Ages. The evolution of modern society and business relations in the Twenty-First Century have been greatly influenced by Digital Transformation from internal operations to inter-company relations, customer-company relations and the role of individual employees to teams employed by Fortune Five-Hundred companies around the globe. The more companies innovate, the higher the bar is raised and with growing technological advances, healthcare innovation and overall improvements in living standards fueling the era of Digital Transformation the needs and expectations of customers and consumers has increased exponentially, which means that if a company is not quick to adapt to cutting-edge technology, they will be left behind and become irrelevant in their industry like Blockbuster Video or Blackberry.
How Does Information Technology (IT) Fit into Digital Transformation?
Information Technology professionals have skills and high-quality ideas that can transform and streamline a company’s process and bottom line by improving interface design, fostering application development and innovating analytics. A strong Information Technology department can drive growth for a company by providing proactive solutions to issues before they become a problem thus saving time and money by minimizing downtime. A healthy blend of hardware and software-based knowledge allows IT professionals to deploy and configure software applications, like an operating system or video-editing tool, to run efficiently on the best hardware; motherboard, central processing unit and hard drive available to a company. A solid IT department can also drive growth by helping a company outsmart, outpace and out-deliver competitors while allowing a business to process large amounts of data using a huge quantity of processing power, complex computer software and deft human analytical skills. Besides keeping things running smoothly with transparency on a day to day basis if an IT department is sharply aligned with an institution’s goals, members in all other departments will be able to understand and provide valuable input aimed at achieving the company’s strategic objectives.
The Importance of Embracing Digital Transformation So You Are Not Left Behind.
The only thing constant in the corporate world is change and competition, so digital resistance can be deadly for any business trying to survive and excel in the Age of Digital Transformation, just ask Sears, Kodak and MySpace employees. Companies that fail to maintain a broad mindset and willingly choose instead to live by the old adage, “If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it”, are undoubtedly doomed to fail if they don’t embrace change as the new recipe for success. Institutions that naively see digital transformation as potentially causing more harm than good may decide to make superficial changes instead of implementing drastic adjustments that enable them to evolve as an organization that can and will keep up with technological advances. This mistake will undoubtedly cause major troubles for a company in the long run. Successful company leadership instead realizes that they need to evolve quickly and are functioning in an operational limbo between business as usual and digital maturity, this failure to predict trends and accelerate digital transformation caused Blockbuster to be crushed by Netflix, Kodak to ignore the digital era and Sears to lose sight of Walmart and Target.
Shifting Towards Customer-Centricity Through Digital Transformation.
Focusing on yielding a high-quality overall experience for customers through digital transformation can be attained by providing workshops and mandating that employees embrace change by offering training sessions for digital resistors who fear change because they are used to doing things the old-fashioned way. Putting the customer at the center of business decisions is a wise move for dynamic companies agile enough to make changes based on new data and information as it becomes available. Failure to adapt and evolve is a death sentence for any institution because customers will predictably move towards companies with digital maturity. Ultimately, in order to boost your business reputation with digital transformation, you must realize that the only true constant is innovation and change.
