Your Guide to the Business Benefits of Digital Transformation in 2022

Technological integrations in business operations are part of a larger movement called digital transformation.

Your team may have felt this during the rise of cloud-based collaboration platforms during the pandemic, or even customized CRMs prior to that.

Today’s blog is about the definition of the scope of digital transformation, how it can benefit your business, and how you can get those benefits for your business.

What Is Digital Business Transformation?

Digital business transformation is the process of integrating more digital technology into a business organization.

This can be done in many different ways, depending on how a business operates. Marketing departments, for example, can adapt digital asset management systems to work faster in producing marketing materials, and organizing all their files into a smarter database.

For some businesses, this can create a totally new revenue stream. An example of this is when social media marketing and networking create an opportunity for educational media like YouTube videos and webinars to be monetized for a company.

The greatest example is probably when Netflix redefined its service from a DVD rental company into a streaming platform, changing the field of streaming services for good.

Beyond the adoption of modern technology and practices, digital business transformation changes the way a business operates by allowing them to arrive at innovations and deliver value faster, as well as improving overall workflow for everyone in the business.

Here are some business benefits you can expect from integrating digital technology into your company’s operations.

Business Benefits Of Digital Transformation

Integrating technology into our daily lives allows us to do more in less time and with fewer resources used. The same is true for businesses that benefit from digital transformation. 

Here are a few benefits observed by organizations that made the move into the modern way of operating a business.

1. Effective and Efficient Data Analysis

Data is an invaluable resource to businesses everywhere. It can take a lot of time to process this, however. Newer technologies allow for faster, more efficient processing of data for all organizations.

An example of this is how Google Analytics aggregates data from a website automatically. Human intervention is needed during its setup, but what follows is a highly efficient way of gathering and analyzing data.

With data being highly important to measure business performance or even the success of a campaign, data analytics technology is among the top priorities when you start out in adopting digital business transformation practices.

2. Enhanced Resource Management

Resource management is another universal concept for businesses. Inventories, asset management, and taking account of resources are measurements of business performance. It is also key to working faster and being able to anticipate needs ahead of time.

Integrating resource management tech like content management systems, digital asset management systems, and inventory management software allows teams across industries to work together much faster and more efficiently.

Content management systems allow team members to remotely access updated files without having to go around the entire workforce for the information. Inventory management systems help avoid scarcity of resources at any time. 

These are both important individually, but imagine being able to use these and other tools to work faster in industries like eCommerce, retail, and others. 

3. Data-Driven Decisions

It’s not only with data gathering and analysis that digital technology can benefit your business. Given the efficiency of artificial intelligence (AI) and automated analytics at collating data from various sources, the right tool can help you make more informed decisions in every aspect of your business.

Imagine being able to gather and update all your customer data in one place, and being able to help your sales, marketing, and production teams to improve their workflow on a daily basis. That’s the power of digital business transformation.

4. Better Digital Customer Experience

Ecommerce technology has turned sales into a fully digital experience for multiple industries. For some, only parts of the process can be accomplished virtually.

One component of the sales process you can enhance through digital transformation is customer service.

Offering customer service through virtual avenues enhances your customers’ experience with your brand, positively affecting your customer retention and their loyalty to your brand.

5. Increased Profits

Increasing access to your brand, its services, and products can help increase your company’s profitability. This can be through performing sales via eCommerce platforms, or by simply marketing your products through digital channels.

Nurturing your customer base can now be done through social media outreach, email marketing, and other digital promotion strategies. Through eCommerce, you can even reach a global market more easily.

6. Enhances Workflow

Digital business transformation can enhance your workflow by introducing technology that automates some steps in your operations, productions, or other workflows. This can help your employees work faster and on more tasks.

Productivity tools also help in making collaboration easier, and accessible to all. With the right technology and strategy, everyone in your company has the option to work at their best at all times.

7. Scale Your Business Faster

By the effect of enhancing productivity, digital business transformation can help your company increase its speed of delivering value to your target market.

eCommerce can also speed up the growth of your profits. These two major benefits, including overall enhanced efficiency with the right technology, can help you scale your business faster than you initially anticipated.

How To Gain The Business Benefits Of Digital Transformation

1. Transform Business Goals Into Objectives

Aligning your objectives with your business goals ensures that your priorities are correct in pursuing digital transformation. This can help in identifying which parts of your business can be migrated immediately and which ones will need work.

Not only that, but it also reveals the challenges you might face and what you can do to prevent them during the migration of your business operations.

2. Evaluate the Possibility

After aligning your goals, you should then evaluate the possibility of actually being able to go digital with your operations. This involves checking your budget, consulting with experts, and reorganizing your priorities.

Can you afford a tech solution to help your sales teams work faster? Will your production team actually benefit from more automation and digitization? 

Finding out the answers to questions like these will help in assessing the scale of digital adoption you can do, and how you can begin.

3. Collaborate With IT

For a successful transition, management must have in-depth collaboration with IT departments. As specialists, they should be highly involved in translating your workflow into virtual workspaces, as well as designing training for the entire organization.

The collaboration with IT specialists should focus on turning goals into specific strategies and making sure they are aligned. As such, IT should guide management in identifying options for an overall strategy that accommodates more integrations in the future. 

4. Have the Right Tools

Having the right tech or app stack is crucial in executing your transformation strategy. Cross-platform integration should be allowed without sacrificing data security and productivity.

As such your IT department may recommend a single provider for all your tech needs or a curated list of solutions that your teams will use to get their jobs done.

5. Redesign For Desired Customer Outcomes

Transforming your business should be centered around the outcomes your customers want from you. Redesigning your processes becomes a fundamental part of executing your transformation successfully.

Your teams may start working and producing faster without actually enhancing your customers’ satisfaction. As such, the end goal of your strategy should be to come up with ways to deliver value to your market faster.

6. Retain and Reskill Staff

Providing training to your existing staff on your new integrations and workflow will make sure you retain as much talent as you can for your company, and help your company optimize the use of your new digital initiatives.

With the impact of hiring on your budget and productivity, it's a wise move to make sure that your strategy includes the proper introduction of your current workforce to your digital transformation.

7. Use Digital Adoption Platforms

Digital adoption platforms help your entire company adapt to changes faster. It does this by integrating guides and help menus into your enterprise apps or tech stack and providing training to your employees.

You can check out digital adoption platforms like Whatfix and Walkme to see the massive benefits of transforming your business with the help of an adoption platform.

8. Classify Your Data

Classifying your data is another key component of successful digital transformation. This may become a huge project for older organizations who work with a lot of files in different places and formats.

Even if it could be a challenging step, this also provides an opportunity for your company to have better data management, especially confidential ones.

9. Establish Authentication and Control Processes

Making sure you have secured authentication processes is another important step in transforming your workflows into more digitized ones.

You may need password managers, authenticators, or other tools for this. This step may require you to work for a third-party security company or collaborate with your IT specialists in making sure all necessary data are handled securely and with confidentiality.

10. Secure Third-Party Audits

Your strategy will be best executed with the help of third-party audits. Allowing experts to conduct an audit of your transformation and its execution makes sure you’re always doing what’s best for your company.

Third-party audits can help you identify alternative options that can save you money, or even have better enhancements to your workflow. They can also help you identify potential security threats or growth opportunities.

Challenges for Digital Business Transformation

1. Industry Policies

Depending on the industry you’re working in, some challenges may already exist outside of your control.

Healthcare practitioners, for example, are always bound by HIPAA regulations in handling patient data. As such, their options remain limited to HIPAA-accredited solutions.

Working with third-party service providers in transforming your business can help you more easily stick to industry policies while you create and execute your transformation strategy.

2. Limited Operating Resources

Getting the business benefits of digital transformation doesn’t come without costs. Investments always need you to have capital.

As such, you will always be limited to your available resources. While larger corporations have in-house IT specialists, as well as the budget for third-party vendors, small businesses may have to look into all-in-one solutions from SaaS companies.

3. Data Build-Up

Data build-up is another challenge in transforming businesses. Migrating your operations into digital platforms means you will also need to have your data available virtually.

Centralizing your database can be troublesome if you're working on multiple platforms, as well as storing data physically.

4. Traditional Security Practices

Traditional security practices may also hinder you from choosing to digitize your workflows. Some entrepreneurs still practice maintaining physical databases for security purposes. There are also others who continue to doubt the security of cloud-based work.

Consulting with a SaaS expert or service provider can help you better understand how secure your data can be on digital platforms. This can also enlighten you on your options for having the best security practices when you transition to the digital workforce.

Moving From Analog To Digital With Virtual Assistants

Hiring a virtual assistant is a great move when migrating your operations from analog to partially digital.

Virtual assistants, especially from Virtudesk, are trained on remote management platforms, equipping them with the skill to help you maximize your business’s app stack. 

Their skill in organization and data management can also be leveraged to help you take care of your data build-up. You can hire virtual assistants just to focus on the tedious work of preparing your old files for a more successful move into your new integrations.

There are also IT virtual assistants who can help you have in-house support during your transition phase. This can be very helpful in making sure you always have someone you can ask whenever trouble arises.

If you wish to hire the help of a virtual assistant to upgrade your business, fill out this form and one of our Consultants will get in touch with you.

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