Digital transformation is inevitable in every business, although the manifestation of a digitally transformed business or its impact might differ from one business to the next. Every business may have its digital transformation strategy, but it will have to identify the type of transformation it intends to undergo.
Each type of transformation may take a different angle and address different challenges, although each is capable of giving the business unique opportunities and challenges. Since digital transformation is a process, the following major digital transformation initiatives can help the business IT departments refocus on their needs.
Transforming business processes
In an environment where business processes are changing first, the operational data store plays a central role in providing access to current operational data in a less complex way. It acts as a repository for storing a business’s current data. Its powerful capabilities enable a business to deliver fresh data at any time so that a business uses it to get real-time insights into business issues.
A business undergoes diverse processes in its quest to deliver top-notch services or products to customers. It undergoes rigorous recruitment processes to hire the best workers. It has product development processes, invoicing, ordering, marketing, and IT infrastructure processes. A business digitization initiative must consider every business process it undergoes to offer benefits of better business agility, efficiency, knowledge transfer, and complete visibility. Technologies vital in improving business processes are data processes, analytics, machine learning, AI, API protocols, etc.
The process transformation initiative gives a business a reimagined environment where a customer can conveniently order from any device or directly access the person they want to speak to. It includes the use of robots to offer an automated reply to customer queries, all geared to adding value to the company.
Initiatives for transforming the business model
An effective business model makes it possible for the business to have in place an elaborate profit-making plan. It considers the approaches it uses to create products, deliver to customers, and add value. The model must fit within a cultural, social, and economic context. Model transforming initiatives might include reconstruction, remodification, or reinventing a business’s profit-making strategies. The initiative will push its operating model to a level where the business achieves its strategic vision in a refocused way.
To achieve a refocused model, there are several digital transformations the business must undergo. First, its production lines, regardless of whether it’s a service or a goods business, must be transformed. By digitizing its production sector, it will limit wastage, cut costs, automate production, limit failure, and improve productivity. The business supply chain will become more effective for better profitability. Intruders in a business, such as hackers, identity thieves, or spying applications, affect business profitability in a big way. Part of the business model digitization initiative should be geared towards thwarting digital intruders to protect the business image and revenues.
Initiatives for promoting business knowledge
Vigorous digital transformation in a business will bring an array of benefits. The most important will be an increase in customer base and revenue. It calls for everyone within the business structure to understand their roles, and it impacts customers daily.
The business might have to revisit its vision, mission, and goals to support its values better. The initiatives might include strategies such as skilling, reskilling, and upskilling to improve the existing worker skills and instill new skills. This initiative will ensure workers are equipped with the right digital knowledge that will help realize the value of the new digital environment. It will help cut costs for hiring experts to run the new systems. Workers will be encouraged to share knowledge, and employer-employee communication barriers shall be broken.
A relook into business spheres
A business digital transformation initiative should look into taking care of its current business and create ways for the business to spread its wings wider. The business should look into the opportunities that digital transformation will bring and how the opportunities will help it introduce more products to extend its domain. New business products cannot perform well without a strong customer base. It should also relook into digitized strategies for leveraging data, redefining innovation, and adjustments that must be done to meet customer desire.
Leaders in the business must take vigorous initiatives that will help redefine various principles that will propel the business into a new product domain. First, the initiative should transform its customer experience. The transformed digital environment should create a system where customers are connected with the business in a way that positively changes their engagement with the business. The transformation should give the business an edge against competition and help the business leverage data through its IT architecture.
It should encourage innovation and value addition for the sake of customers. In a digital environment where a business has introduced more products into its domain, more data will be generated. This data has great potential to help the business get real-time insights. The operational data store can be the right tool to help sustain enough supply of current data that can be processed to give scientific results. Leveraging the ODS will ensure a business stays updated with information on the competition, customer interaction, and service delivery.
Transforming the business culture
The frontline workers, managers, and business owners have a working style they have developed over the years. They are used to certain ways of doing things both at the front and back office. Customers, too, have adopted a certain way of making orders, requests, complaints, or comments. A company’s digital transformation initiative will disrupt every culture the business has been used to, both internally and externally. Although every worker desires to see a change in the business, a vigorous digital transformation might create resistance to some extent.
One of the major digital transformation initiatives of a business should be to work on its business culture and move it to a level where every concerned individual will find firm ground to accept the changes. Since the change can be sudden, a business should spread awareness first to its workers or internal customers and then to its external customers. Workers will have to adjust to a new way of working, and customers will have to adjust to a new way of making orders.
The initiative should help define the business values, behaviors, what cannot be negotiated, measure its efforts, and align its culture to its brand. It helps create guidelines for accountability and to bring everyone on board.
