The Fundamentals of Effective Digital Transformation

Effective digital transformation is still an enigma for many businesses. A surprising number of organizations aren’t aware of the positive outcomes it can bring. In fact, Everest Group discovered that 73% of companies struggled to derive any business value through their digital transformation activities.

Digital transformation is the fundamental shift that impacts market operations, economies, and structures as they get emerging technologies applied in each segment. Therefore, the decision to undercome a digital transformation is not easy to make.

What’s effective digital transformation?

This means that companies have to make a shift towards a more flexible, agile, and customer-centric culture. They need to find a more digital-oriented approach to what’s already been making them profitable. 

For example, banks shift to digital banking apps, while retail stores focus on e-commerce. New digitized approaches and modern operating structures open the door for additional revenue opportunities, new collaborations, and a smarter, faster, and more personalized customer base.

Well-known brands aren’t the only ones that should benefit from digital transformation. Digital transformation is for every company that wants to get ready for the future. Companies that want to survive through innovation must undergo this process. 

Digital transformation brings many benefits for companies. According to executives, the top three benefits of digital transformation are better operational performance (40%), reduced time-to-market (36%), and answering to customer preferences (35%). 

Although it can happen in countless ways, here are the fundamentals of effective digital transformation. 

Adopt accelerated innovations

Organizations need to continually look for innovative ideas and be ready to integrate them swiftly and effectively to remain competitive in an emerging environment. When you’re not able to adopt accelerating innovation of your services, operations, and assets, you’re going to slip off.

During the process of digital transformation, emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning, and blockchain are your friends. These technologies will shape our future, and leveraging some of them will give you a competitive advantage.

Start with the foundation

As you undergo digital transformation, you’ll have to change the core practices of your operations that have been there for years. Effective digital transformation starts when you dive deep into your existing structures and optimize them according to the new, dynamic circumstances. 

For example, if you’ve been using monolithic software systems, your next step is to shift to loosely-coupled services called microservices. To perform this, you have to develop APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). This will establish a stable roadmap to access the information from the existing infrastructure. Moreover, this means you’ll migrate to the cloud where everything becomes more flexible and accessible. 

Starting with the foundations has to result in agile processes that will increase productivity and effectiveness. At the same time, you’ll be able to deliver a more modern, user-friendly experience.

Focus on humans

Effective digital transformation is all about humans. Focusing on emotions, interactions, and reactions is at the root of every successful transition. Naturally, technology is necessary. But, having all employees on board, and working on common goals is even more critical. 

That’s why you should start by informing your team about the transformation. Furthermore, you should clarify what skills they are expected to acquire now that the processes will be changing. 

To perform this successfully, you need a team of curious professionals who always want to learn something new. Next, you have to motivate them so that they will do their best for the company. Finally, this won’t succeed if they don’t have any passion for what your organization is doing. 

Understand your customers

Your customers are the reason why you’re doing digital transformation. That’s why you should take some time to understand their behaviors. When you get to know your customers better, you’ll be able to build better digital products for them. 

Customers also agree. In fact, 76% of them expect companies to have an understanding of their needs and expectations. Unless you don’t satisfy what your users want or need, your digital change strategies will eventually fall short, and you’ll risk getting left out. The latest technologies, latest strategies and practices, the greatest marketing strategies – none of this will apply if the final product doesn’t make the customer experience smoother.

Focusing on emotions, digital products will help you establish a strong bond with your customers. This will lead to more loyal customers, as customers who are emotionally connected to a brand have a higher lifetime value of 306%.

Endorse collaboration

New technologies will open new collaboration opportunities. That’s why you should encourage collaboration at every level. 

Start within your company. Set up new practices that enable professionals from various teams to collaborate. Then, the next step would be cross-team collaboration. Putting so many different minds together can result in great ideas.

Next, collaboration with your customers can open many new possibilities for product improvements. Modern design thinking methodologies allow you to collect customer feedback and involve your actual users in the creation of your digital products. This way, you’ll build products that are right on point and provide exactly what your target group wants. 

Finally, collaboration with other companies can result in top-notch technology. We elaborate on this in the next point.

Look for new partnerships

You can’t have an effective digital transformation on your own. Finding a tech partner that is experienced with cutting-edge technologies can make the process go much smoother. 

This way, you’ll get some fresh ideas that will fuel your growth engine. Together with your tech partner, you can find digital solutions to many customer struggles and release them efficiently. 

An experienced companion with a team of development experts can help you identify market opportunities you never knew existed. You’ll get UX expertise, QA testers, talented & experienced developers, and business development professionals without having to set up your own team. They can deliver your complex end-to-end software solution through an agile project management process that will include you in every step of the way.

To sum things up

Talking about digital transformation often evokes fantasies of a distant future where every aspect of our lives is based on tech. However, digital transformation is much simpler and it’s here, now. 

Effective digital transformation puts an accent on the technology that automates repetitive processes that are usually performed manually. However, technology is playing this role to make products better for the people using them. 

Digital transformation is all about reinventing the company’s business model and making it more agile and customer-oriented. It requires a technology shift, but more importantly, it requires a mindset shift. 

If you want to grow through digital transformation, contact our team of experts.