Some organizations have made new positions specifically designed to handle the digital transformation process. These professionals are termed, “Chief Digital Officers.” While the introduction of this role was meant to make digital transformations smoother, they have often caused more complications and engaged in responsibilities outside of their scope.
Companies can expect to experience upheavals in daily operations that will result in a period of lower revenues until the changes have been completed.
In any business that’s undergoing a digital transformation, it’s important to remember that the customer is king. To that effect, managers should steer clear of industry trends that involve putting too much focus on the collection and analysis of customer data. The same goes for efforts that are too focused on attracting one-time buyers via social media marketing campaigns.
Instead, it is much more advisable in the long run to focus on building genuine customer relationships and marinating healthy rates of customer retention. These focus areas require different techniques than mere data collection and analyses. The benefit of building solid customer relationships and growing long-term customers is a key to success in any industry.
Managers should always keep this in mind, especially when planning a digital transformation, and ensure that the ensuing changes to come will bear no impact on the core principles of building customer relationships. Doing this will help retain more customers after the transformation is over.
This can be difficult to put an exact figure on however there are some surprising trends that will put things in perspective. For example, some managers may be surprised to know that in today’s tech-driven market, 35% of small businesses in Australia are still offline. That’s right, 35% of Australian small businesses are not connected to or engaging with the internet. More interesting still is that they are successful and doing rather well. These businesses are performing much better than almost anyone would expect considering they do not make use of the internet.
There are a number of key areas that will experience marked improvements after the optimization from the digital transformation has been applied. These areas range from cybersecurity to more lucrative profit margins and invariably have a profound impact on the company. Let’s take a closer look:
1. Stronger Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity is naturally one of the areas that will need to grow quickly in order to keep all of the new equipment and software as well as increased online operations secure. By using technology and the internet more, which is an inevitable result of digital transformations, the need for strong cybersecurity capabilities grows in tandem.
2. Superior Computing Power
This goes for both cloud computing and supercomputers. Digital transformations bring the best of both and empower companies with robust computing capabilities that will give them a strong competitive edge.
The key advantage here is the ease of access to these technologies that were much more expensive to facilitate in the past. Today, companies can benefit from advances in supercomputing that allows them to simplify transactional and analytical processing. The importance of this cannot be understated as those who are old enough to remember the hurdles and outrageous expense involved in accessing this level of computing power in previous years will readily appreciate the ease of access and greatly reduced cost.
Likewise, cloud computing has been changing as well. Instead of being newly constructed, which is of course monstrously costly, cloud infrastructure is now rented. Powerful cloud infrastructures can be utilized much more conservatively than before.
3. Increased Profits and Efficiency
Companies that follow successful digital transformation examples will benefit from increases in both profits and efficiency.
One way that optimization with digital transformations is realized is through the clearance of bottlenecks. Companies of all sizes experience expensive bottlenecks in their operations such as when machines cannot communicate with each other and then must be entered manually. This is both a time-consuming and horrendously unnecessary expense.
These increases are the cumulative result of the changes that a digital transformation imposes on the business. The combined effects of the changes incorporate benefits in customer management, overall operational efficiency, and stronger cybersecurity resources.
Overall at the end of the harrowing experience, most digital transformation examples will see their profits turn back around and increase from their previous levels. The decline in profits that befalls organizations during the restructuring process is reversed. It is important to note that in addition to this reversal, revenues increase for most digital transformation examples.
Another resulting change post-digital transformation will be a more lucrative relationship with customers using the methodology discussed previously.
ASE is here to help guide companies of all sizes through the digital transformation process. Don’t fall behind the times, contact ASE today and navigate the digital transformation process with ease.