Breaking Down What Digital Transformation Is All About
Introduction
In today’s world, pretty much everything is now available via electronic means. Probably the best example of this is the content world. For the most part, gone are the days when print publishers and bookstores dominated the marketplace. For example, you can now get newspapers and books delivered straight to your wireless device and read them at your convenience without having to lug the actual paper copy with you. While this does offer a significant advantage to the customer for on demand content, this trend has also driven many traditional brick and mortar stores out of business. The biggest example of this is Border’s. Even Barnes and Noble is starting to feel the great pinch of everything going digital, as well as some of the major newspaper print shops around the United States. But despite this, the trend of completely going digital in all aspects of a business or corporation is only going to grow at a rapid pace to the point where even workers will not even have to report to work at a traditional brick and mortar office anymore. All work-related deliverables can be completed and delivered through electronic means.
What Is Digital Transformation?
The trend described above is known as “Digital Transformation”. Specifically, it can be defined as follows: “It is the process of using digital technologies to create new — or modify existing — business processes, culture, and customer experiences to meet changing business and market requirements. This re-imagining of business in the digital age is digital transformation.”
(SOURCE: 1).
As one can see from this definition, Digital Transformation just does not directly impact an organization’s basic processes. Rather, it is having an all-encompassing effect on everything and anything that they engage in, ranging from delivering a great shopping experience for the customer to
keeping ahead of the competition through the primary use of technology.
What is Driving This Trend?
What are some of the catalysts that are fueling this new revolution?
1) It’s necessary for survival:
Business entities that are stuck in the rut of doing things one way just because they have been doing it for a long time will no longer exist. This is primarily because they have failed to adapt to the much newer ways of reaching building up their brands and reaching out to their customer base. The best example of this is the use of Social Media. Virtually every business makes use of Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. in order to reach out to an untapped virtual market. Those that just use the traditional means of sales and marketing will be crowded in just a matter of minutes. In fact, it is predicted that global spending on various forms of Digital Technologies will be in excess of $1.97 trillion by the year 2022, which represents a huge growth rate of almost 17% between now and then.
(SOURCE: 2).
In other words, if a business entity “snoozes” on this end, it will be guaranteed of losing out. The matrix below depicts where organizations are spending the most in terms of Digital Transformation technologies, according to research based upon by McKinsey:
Technology % of Companies That Have Deployed It
Web based Technologies 85%
Cloud based Services 81%
Mobile/Wireless Platforms 68%
Big Data/Big Data Architecture 56%
Internet of Things (IoT) 45%
Design Thinking Platforms 44%
Artificial Intelligence Tools 31%
Robotics 21%
Machine Learning Platforms 17%
Augmented Reality Technologies 15%
Additive Manufacturing Platforms 13%
(SOURCE: 3).
2) The growth of data:
Given the fact that pretty much all technological platforms are now interconnected with one another, there is an explosion in the amount of information and data that an organization must use, not only in order to keep up with their competition, but to also gain new customers. As a result, this has paved the way for the use of various forms of technologies to make use of advanced analytical algorithms. The reason for this is that the sales and marketing team cannot spend hours or days trying to comb through all of this – they need to see hidden buying trends of customers so that they can keep up with their ever-changing demands on a real time basis. This is also especially crucial when test marketing a new product or service – they need to see results quickly so that they can hone in and fine tune their marketing strategies on a constant basis.
3) A brand-new customer experience:
Gone also are the days when a customer would sift through the Sunday newspaper advertisements to see where the best deals are. Given just how much the Smartphone has become an extension of both our professional and personal lives, customers now want to see where they can get these deals delivered straight to their wireless device-whether it is by text, Email, or even ads on their mobile web browser. Also, the trend here is that a customer is no longer going to wait to visit a traditional brick and mortar store to shop for those deals. They are going to do it instantaneously right on their iPhone or Android device once they see that special deal. Thus, many retail-based businesses are now adopting to this age of digital transformation by creating easy to use and appealing online stores to woo these customers.
Conclusions – An Example of Digital Transformation
As it was described earlier, the era of Digital Transformation is allowing customers to make purchases in an instant whenever they want to (especially when hunger strikes). Probably one of the best examples of this is that of Domino’s Pizza. They have embraced the concept of Digital Transformation in such a way that it totally enhances the customer experience to even higher levels. For example, straight from your iPhone or Android device, a customer can order a pizza that they have purchased before, or even custom create a brand new one, as seen here:
(SOURCE: 4).
A customer can even keep track of when their pizza was being made to when it will be delivered, as illustrated below:
(SOURCE: 4).
In fact, Domino’s is planning to take this Digital Transformation one step further, by allowing a customer to custom create and order a pizza via voice command through Amazon’s Echo. Are you ready to embrace the wave of Digital Transformation; because ready or not, here it comes. If you have any questions on how we can help your company or organization with digital transformation initiatives please reach out to us.
Sources
1) https://www.salesforce.com/products/platform/what-is-digital-transformation/
2) https://enterprisersproject.com/what-is-digital-transformation
3) https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/unlocking-success-in-digital-transformations
4) https://www.heflo.com/blog/business-transformation/digital-transformation-examples/
