The COVID-19 outbreak has radically changed how organizations operate across the industrial sector, forcing them to adapt to a completely different business environment in order to stay competitive. However, at the same time, it has also empowered businesses to accelerate their digital transformation projects, many of which had already been embarked on before the pandemic.
Digital Transformation in the Pandemic. Image Credits- DQ India
But first, what do you mean by Digital Transformation?
According to Deloitte, “digital transformation is all about becoming a digital enterprise—an organization that uses technology to continuously evolve all aspects of its business models (what it offers, how it interacts with customers and how it operates).” It deals with cultural integration as well as technological change that leads to improved performance and efficiency of a company. For businesses, this means constantly looking for ways to improve the end-user experience. This can be done by providing advanced on-demand training, migrating data to cloud services, leveraging artificial intelligence, and more.
Why is it necessary?
According to the latest Harvard Business Review study, approximately US $ 1.3 trillion was invested in digital transformation in 2018. Despite this, much of that spending ends up being wasted in digital transformation. Business initiatives fail because they are not really prepared for change. It is not just about investing in capital, but also developing strategies, executing, and solving the challenges and opportunities that come with it. Experience and skills related to digital transformation are now required for the strategic planning of most companies.
While every digital transformation initiative has its own specific goals, the primary goal of any digital transformation is to improve your existing processes. It is important as companies need to evolve to stay competitive in their industry. If you don't make progress, you will fall behind. It is necessary because it allows organizations to adapt to ever-changing industries and constantly improve the way they operate.
How has digital transformation accelerated in a pandemic for businesses?
While the ROI of digital transformation depends on a variety of factors, the right technology can dramatically improve how your business operates and how customers interact with it.
1. Improve innovation through digital transformation
The digitization of a company's operations means being able to innovate and seize new business opportunities, because of automated processes, companies have plenty of time to focus on their R&D, which allows them to innovate products, respond to new needs, and have more efficient tools. Focusing on innovation and customer needs, making the company more relevant and leading in its region, allows companies to increase the satisfaction of their customers, resulting in increased profits and longer customer relationships.
2. Grow faster
The success of many companies like Uber is largely due to their adaptation to new consumption patterns caused by digital technology. Digital technology allows businesses to interact faster with different audiences in multiple locations, at the same time, as the Internet is accessible in all regions of the world. This leads to the expansion of the customer scale on the international market, allowing businesses to grow faster and more widely at a rapid rate than before.
3. Improving the flow of information
As digital transformation fosters collaborative work, it improves the flow of information in an ever-changing environment through the division of services and the empowerment of people, with the goal of building an effective value chain to serve customer satisfaction. (try dividing this into two sentences) The growth of digital technology facilitates the linkage between demand and supply of goods or services because it is easier for customers to communicate through different channels with suppliers this maintains an enthusiastic attachment to the business, ensuring customer satisfaction and the overall shopping experience, not simply making a purchase or sale.
4. Optimizing Performance
Digital transformation has optimized companies' workflows by automated processes, allowing employees and departments to focus more on crucial tasks. These operations are made more efficient with minimization of risks, enabling increased profits and driving business growth.
Furthermore, thanks to the use of (specify which tools) tools, not only tasks are optimized; it can also help with: business analysis, inventory management, customer communication, reduce employee workload improves handling of corporate workflow.
5. Collaborative and flexible environment
Corporate digitization is revolutionizing our daily professional lives, especially thanks to the mobility and flexibility that generalizes the applications and new trends such as remote working. This not only allows efficient collaboration and flexibility within the company but also the redesign of the space (open spaces, coworking, etc.)
This type of environment allows employees to feel more engaged and collaborative to work towards the same goal, allowing them to organize their work, thereby minimizing work duplication and rotation. It also ensures that companies achieve optimal working conditions and position themselves as a valuable company to work for.
Digital Transformation in the Pandemic.
Image Credits- Influitive
6. Customer Engagement
Because everyone is connected to the Internet today, businesses are required to have an online presence; This is why digital transformation helps companies maintain a working platform to communicate with the public, allowing customers to engage on different online channels and stay connected to the business., while the business follows new trends and customer behavior.
7. International Audience
The Internet is available anywhere in the world, a business need not focus solely on local commerce, a very important part of digital transformation lies in the quality of its expansion and growth. If the company has an online presence, it will be able to reach audiences around the world, thus expanding its customer base and opening up new opportunities for international expansion. Likewise, depending on its strategy and goals, the company can easily switch to another. country's market; without having to move the body.
8. Reducing costs
By automating processes through digitization, processes are more efficient and optimized, with the benefit of reduced operating costs and errors, and assured operations, appropriate actions to achieve desired goals. Additionally, as employees' workloads are reduced, they can focus their time on more important tasks that lead to innovation and process improvement.
Digital transformation is a much-needed practice that allows businesses to maximize their profits by minimizing operational and employment costs, as tasks are digitized and automated; companies reduce hiring needs and become more optimized, resulting in higher gross margins.
How to implement Digital Transformation?
Digital transformation will be different for every business, but there are some basic principles that can be applied to every organization:
Change must be recognized.
Improve the customer and employee experience.
Empower people to do things differently.
Stimulate innovation through new methods and tools.
Leading from above. (relook this point)
Modernize the corporate culture.
But today's digital environment offers an unprecedented opportunity to adopt smart, digital business models and strategies. PiMonk's dedicated development teams have the expertise, experience, and skills to deliver top-quality IT transformation services, tailored to stay ahead of evolving market needs.
Digital Transformation in the Pandemic Image Credits- GCN India
Conclusion
For many years Digital Transformation was the most popular buzzword, but now it's become a game-changer, especially during pandemic it is happening at a faster and higher rate than any of us can imagine. Today, every post, blog post, Facebook post, Tweet, industry report, or survey is geared towards a major digital transformation in our society. Thus, it has revolutionized every industry to become more efficient and flexible in this "new normal ''.