Digital transformation causes a lot of changes over time. If you’ll choose to stick to the traditional ways of doing things, your business might be left out. But if you will consider the following trends, you can make the most out of them and use them to your advantage.
1. Rapid technological and consumer change creates a need for businesses to act differently – or else suffer the consequences.
If you take a view of the long-term trend over the 21st century and the previous, you’ll clearly see that digital technologies like smartphones are just one of the many changes that have emerged and reached mass market adoption with a rising speed. Before the internet’s emergence, innovations including the telephone, refrigerator, and washing machine came to market at an accelerating pace. Nowadays, we’re in a situation where product and service adoption by hundreds of millions of people can happen in a very short time. Pokemon GO is an evidence of this.
Established companies of all sizes are being challenged by this increasingly rapid pace as fast-moving startups who are focusing more on customer centricity than internal process adherence eat into the market share.
It’s this changing set of circumstances that has caused a spike in interest around the idea of digital transformation.
2. Common themes are what defines digital transformation.
There isn’t a single accepted definition of digital transformation, but it has common themes.
- Technology: Businesses with established processes and ways of working may not be making the most of the new tools that are available to grow and protect their market share.
- Business transformation: Why are there many businesses that use legacy technology and lack innovative ways of working? It’s because they have processes, skill sets and cultures that create barriers to moving quickly. Marketing often drives and sets an agenda for digital transformation, but doing so will require the buy-in and support of multiple departments.
- Customer experience: It’s a common occurrence that businesses look inward at the status quo rather than outward towards their customers’ needs. Customer centricity is an element that has to be deeply embedded as part of any serious digital transformation effort.
3. You need four T’s to win: technology, techniques, teams, and talent.
Why should businesses care about the shift to digital channels? It’s because the customers are on digital channels — people now spend more than eight hours a day using them. Fortunately, 93% of multinational companies are now in the process of changing their business models to adapt to the shift.
This adaptation requires the alignment of the four T’s. By doing so, you can start taking steps towards improving your business processes to enable your company to adapt to the rapid digital change.
4. Size doesn’t dictate success.
Hero K12 is an education management company that helps schools and school districts keep track of students’ performance and behaviour. It’s composed of only 35 people and just four marketing staff. The marketing team has shifted from the old way of marketing which involves trade shows, advertising and mass media to a totally inbound approach which involves teaching people through lightweight interactions over time. Because of that, they were able to come up with a product that helps millions of students at thousands of schools — and thousands of software users are interacting on the platform every day. Hero’s example proves that effective digital transformation can result in a very efficient and brilliant customer experience, even in industries and sectors where traditional ways can be hard to change.
If you need a digital channel that will help you boost your business, consider one that can promote your business, products and/or services and other relevant pieces of content at the same time. For more information on this, visit Top4.
