As a business owner, you know that the best way to grow your company is through digital transformation. But what does that mean?
Digital transformation refers to a company’s move from traditional ways of doing business to a new, more digital-friendly approach. The term digital transformation is used by companies and individuals alike to describe the process of moving from traditional business models to those that rely on technology and data.
Digital transformation means making changes to your business processes, systems and tools so that your company operates more efficiently. It can be as simple as updating your website or as complex as building a mobile app. The key to digital transformation is that it needs to be specific to your business — not just another generic software solution. Finding the right custom software development company can make all the difference in a successful transformation.
In a nutshell, the greatest benefits of digital transformation include:
Rethinking how your company uses technology to streamline processes and create better customer experiences
Investing in analytics software that helps you make better decisions about your business
Increasing security and protecting your data in an era where cyber-attacks are on the rise
Automating processes to capitalize on technology’s ability to fill the labour shortage gap
Let’s go into each category and explore the full range of benefits that come with digital transformation, and discover why 56% of companies are currently prioritizing digital transformation worldwide as of 2021.
Enhance Customer Experience
The consumer's expectations have changed, and businesses are looking for innovative solutions to meet those demands. According to Forbes, companies that lead in customer experience outperform laggards by nearly 80%.
Custom software can lead to a better customer experience by making your products and services faster, easily accessible, and easier to use.
"Customer experience" or "CX" refers to the emotions and feelings that customers have when interacting with a brand. Think of a time you had difficulty getting what you wanted out of a business. You might have experienced frustration, anger, or even disappointment. On the flipside, you might have had a great experience, where a website was easy to use and allowed you to access what you needed right away. Which one would you recommend to your friends and family?
To put it simply, CX is how your customers feel about their interactions with you — whether it's good or bad.
There are many benefits companies can reap from using custom software to improve CX:
1) Improve the onboarding process for new customers with a streamlined design
2) Make it easy for customers to find what they're looking for on your site
3) Reduce drop off during checkout by simplifying the purchasing process
4) Increase likelihood of users recommending your product or service to others
5) Establish brand dominance by offering an innovative and positive exchange with users
Having a high rating for customer experience suggests a culture within the business that embraces innovation and adapts quickly to change. These are vital qualities consumers are looking out for in today’s world. It’s up to you to stay up to date or risk losing valuable customers to your competitors.
2. Business Intelligence Plays a Crucial Role in Entrepreneurial Success
Often overlooked is the valuable data within a business. The ability to summon certain data, have a program automatically organize it in meaningful ways, or to use it to calculate forecasts can make a world of difference. This is what digital transformation can do.
In order for entrepreneurs to succeed, they need access to the right information at the right time — especially when making critical decisions about their business’s future.
How will sales grow? What challenges do customers face when using your product or service? Do you have enough cash left in your bank account to make payroll next month? These are just some of the questions that could be answered through BI software.
BI is an umbrella term for all sorts of tools and technologies that help companies gain insights into their operations and allow them to make informed decisions about how to improve their performance over time. BI can be used for predictive analytics, which provides insight into future trends and patterns. Predictive analytics can also be used for forecasting and scenario planning, as well as for risk analysis and fraud detection.
Data is the new currency. The more you have, the more you can do with it, whether that be analyzing trends or making decisions based on data points that would otherwise be impossible to evaluate.
Understanding the role of Business Intelligence in company success is essential for those looking to build their own enterprise from scratch or take an existing one to the next level.
The fact is that businesses need accurate data in order to make decisions that will help them grow bigger and stronger over time, but not every company has access to this kind of information at their fingertips yet.
3. Digital Transformation is the Fortress Protecting Your Business
The internet is a dangerous place. With millions of people connected to one another and sharing information online, there’s no shortage of cyber criminals looking to exploit any vulnerability they can find.
Custom software development can be a key component of your digital transformation strategy by helping to keep your enterprise safe from cyber attacks.
Here are some ways custom software development can help protect your business:
Secure Data Storage
With cloud-based solutions becoming increasingly popular, it’s important to have a secure way to store data in the cloud without compromising security or privacy. Custom software development can help ensure that any data stored in the cloud is encrypted and protected from unauthorized access by using strong encryption algorithms and strong passwords to protect information stored on servers or mobile devices.
Secure Communication Channels
Custom software development can also play an important role in securing communication channels between employees within your organization as well as between employees at different companies who may be collaborating on projects together.
4. Mitigate the Setbacks of the Labour Shortage with Automation Tools
One of the biggest challenges facing businesses today is finding and retaining skilled workers. In fact, 49% of business leaders report that the top impediment to growth is the shortages of qualified job candidates to fill open roles.
So how can you solve this problem? One way is by automating roles that are otherwise going unfilled due to lack of experience or expertise required to fill them efficiently and effectively.
Through digital transformation, companies can use automation as an essential tool for improving productivity without increasing costs or staffing levels. While automation contributes directly to productivity by performing routine tasks faster and more accurately than humans can, it also creates a foundation for innovation by freeing up workers’ time so they can focus on higher-value functions.
5. Get to Market Faster and Continuously Improve Systems
Digital transformation should be a top priority for businesses because it can help you get your product or service to the market faster and allow your business to continuously improve systems.
That's because it increases speed, improves quality and reduces costs for your organization. The goal is to enable faster decision making that leads to better outcomes for customers and employees alike.
Digital transformation requires you to understand what's possible with technology and then build it into your existing business processes. It's not just about adding new technology but also leveraging existing assets in new ways — like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and automation software — so they can be applied more effectively throughout the organization.
Digital transformation is more than just adopting new technologies; it’s about changing the way you operate to bring about a fundamental shift in how you do business. It enables organizations to go from being product-centric to customer-centric, from batch-based processes to real-time interactions, from siloed systems to integrated operations, and from data storage to data generation and analysis.
In other words, digital transformation is an opportunity for businesses to transform their internal processes and systems so they can better serve customers and compete in a fast-moving marketplace.
6. Increase Overall Revenue With Higher Output Volumes
The benefits of digital transformation are endless. However, one of the biggest advantages is that it can help your business increase overall revenue with higher output volumes.
Digital transformation means that the company is able to leverage the power of technology to improve its efficiency and productivity, as well as reduce costs. This translates into increased profits for the business.
The digital transformation of your business is a long-term process. You need to start small and add more features over time. But it’s worth it. Why? Because you’ll be able to do more things with your business, which will lead to more revenue.
The digital transformation of your business isn’t just about getting new customers or improving the customer experience. It’s about increasing your output volumes as well.
Here are some ways that digital transformation can help your business increase overall revenue with higher output volumes:
- Automate processes and streamline data organization
- Increase the productivity level of your employees
- Reduce costs through automation
7. Provide a positive employee experience
When you think about the concept of digital transformation, it's easy to focus on the technology itself. The cloud, artificial intelligence, and big data are all important parts of this effort, but they're not the only part. As much as these technologies help you make better decisions and run more efficient operations, they can't take care of everything.
Employees Are More Creative Than Algorithms
You may have heard about how technology is taking over the workplace, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Building off of our earlier point, using technology to cover mundane tasks can free up your employees to work on more meaningful things. Humans have a great capacity for creativity, innovative thinking, and conceptual problem solving that technology just can't match yet. Instead of wasting your resources giving your employees tasks that are time consuming and repetitive, allow the power of digital transformation to decide what can be done through an algorithm. Your business processes can be accomplished through customized programs that allow your workers to worry about the tasks that will ultimately contribute to the overall success of your business.
The Takeaway
Digital transformation has become the primary focus for many businesses because it allows them to improve operational efficiency, reduce costs, enhance customer satisfaction and increase revenue. If your business is looking for ways to grow its bottom line, then you should consider making digital transformation part of your strategy using a qualified team of professionals.
In summary, the benefits of digital transformation are endless:
Improve customer experience
Make informed company decisions
Protect your business from the ever-increasing risk of cyber attacks
Increase operational efficiency and reduce costs at every level of your organization through automation
Get your products & services to market faster and improve your systems consistently
Boost overall revenue
Provide a better employee experience
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Written by Natalie Mansilla
ISU Corp is an award-winning software development company, with over 17 years of experience in multiple industries, providing cost-effective custom software development, technology management, and IT outsourcing.
Our unique owners’ mindset reduces development costs and fast-tracks timelines. We help craft the specifications of your project based on your company's needs, to produce the best ROI. Find out why startups, all the way to fortune 500 companies like General Electric, Heinz, and many others have trusted us with their projects. Contact us here.
