For a business to achieve success, it is important that it goes out of its comfort zone and keeps up with the latest market trends and practices. With the competition in the market intensifying every day, this factor is even more crucial for businesses to stand out and gain the market’s favor.
It is commonly known that businesses that do not keep up with the latest market trends are unable to deliver up to the customer expectations and compromise on revenue. Moreover, in the worst-case scenario, the market is likely to completely abandon a brand that holds no value.
As a result, if a business wishes to retain customers and remain profitable, it has to keep up with the latest market trends. One such trend is digital transformation, which is taking businesses from numerous industries and sectors by storm.
What is Digital Transformation?
Digital transformation is the practice of adopting digital technologies and tech-based solutions in a business’s operations. This trend is not new and has gained immense popularity since its advent. Speaking factually, the market for digital transformation is valued at $469.8 billion as of 2020.
In the present time, almost anything and everything can be done digitally. Moreover, when conducted digitally, processes are more likely to generate a greater output and help businesses achieve their objective in less time.
To add to that, present-day consumers are tech-savvy and prefer to do things digitally. Owing to this factor, the consumer market welcomes businesses that transform digitally and are more likely to avail their goods and services. You must also know that in certain industries, consumers are known to abandon businesses that have failed to keep up with digital transformation.
Digital Transformation vs. Digitalization: What’s the Difference?
Digitalization and digital transformations are essentially two sides of the same coin. In digitalization, a business adapts a single project that brings tech innovation to a certain area of operations. For instance, a business implementing fin-tech technology in its finance department is undergoing digitalization.
Digital transformation, on the other hand, refers to broader and more comprehensive technology implementation in a business’s processes. To elaborate, when a business goes completely digital, it is known to undergo digital transformation. These businesses implement technology in every department of their operations.
Moreover, it is important to know that digitalization and digital transformation go hand in hand. A business that digitalizes its multiple operations will ultimately end up undergoing digital transformation.
Nevertheless, both digitalization and digital transformation bring numerous benefits to a business once implemented. The next section of this blog will cover those benefits in detail, so make sure to read them carefully.
7 Ways Your Business can Benefit from Digital Transformation
Higher Revenue Generation
Every business aims to maximize its revenue and earn higher profits. Digital transformation is commonly known to facilitate this need and increase business profitability in a short time span.
A business can use digital technology to sell its goods and services to a larger audience, therefore increasing its revenue generation. Moreover, with the help of process automation technology, businesses can achieve their targets in a comparatively shorter time span, therefore generating a higher profit.
Consequently, digital technology is the future for businesses that aim to achieve tremendous market success and maximize their revenue.
Better Customer Retention
Retaining old customers and turning them into repetitive buyers is essential for every business. You must know that businesses have to incur a cost of customer acquisition, which can be avoided if they focus on customer retention.
We discussed before that modern-day customers are tech-savvy and prefer to do things the digital way. Consequently, when a business undertakes digital transformation, it can meet the demands of these customers and deliver customer satisfaction.
Moreover, a large part of digital technology reloves around delivering added value to the customers on each sale and gaining their loyalty. As a result, digital transformation is the key to retaining old customers and reducing the cost of sales for a business.
Increased Operational Efficiency
Conducting processes manually is a time and labor-intensive task and is therefore inefficient most of the time. This is one of the core reasons why businesses undertake digital transformation.
By implementing digital technologies, businesses can automate numerous monotonous and repetitive tasks, therefore increasing their operational efficiency. In the present time, almost everything can be automated, from PR management to finance and inventory management and beyond.
Resulting from this, business owners have more time to focus on important tasks such as strategic planning and business management.
Less Workforce Requirement
It is commonly known that the latest technological advancements are self-dependant and are capable of conducting various complex tasks with ease, therefore, requiring less human involvement.
When a business undergoes digital transformation, it can largely cut down on the cost of human resource requirements. Since digital technology is highly reliable and is known to generate precise results, the need for human resources is diminishing every day.
From less technical tasks like car washing and cleaning to more critical ones like inventory management and tracking, technology can do all of it with ease.
Moreover, investing in technology is a one-time expense, which isn’t the same for hiring an employee, making it a cost-effective option. Consequently, businesses are moving to tech-based solutions for their requirements.
Access Insightful Customer Data
Analytical data is essential for a business in the long term. Using this data, a business can predict market trends and make precise decisions.
Digital transformation facilitates this need and provides crucial customer data to businesses. This data is useful for understanding consumer behavior and purchase trends in the market.
By taking your business digital, you can gain access to high-end analytics and plan your business accordingly. This aspect of digital transformation is often overlooked by businesses but is highly crucial for delivering customer-centric services and achieving customer satisfaction.
Ease in Expansion
The ultimate goal of every business is to expand and grow, which is necessary for higher revenue generation. However, businesses usually associate expansion with starting a business at a new geographical location.
Contrary to this belief, digital transformation enables businesses to seamlessly expand and explore new markets without having any physical presence. This enables businesses to sell their goods/ services to a larger audience and generate higher revenue.
At the present time, a large number of consumers have already begun to use technology. As a result, businesses that undertake digital transformation benefit from seamless expansion and growth as they have easy access to the global consumer market.
High Agility
It is commonly known that the market scenario is rapidly changing as global consumers are adapting to digital technology. Consequently, it is becoming challenging for businesses to have high sales with traditional selling methods. 92% of businesses believe that digital transformation is the only way to survive in the industry.
By transforming digitally, businesses can remain trendy and gain from higher consumer acceptance. Speaking factually, customers are quick to abandon a brand if it fails to meet their expectations, which currently is a digital presence.
Consequently, by going digital, a business can reduce its chances of getting abandoned and retain its customers for repetitive revenue. This is one of the most important aspects of digital transformation and should not be underestimated.
These were some of the many benefits of digital transformation. We hope that by now, you are aware of why exactly your business needs to go digital. Moving further, let’s take a look at how digital transformation has taken over certain industries and has benefitted them.
Top 6 Industrial Examples of Digital Transformation
Healthcare
The recent pandemic has made people realize the importance of high-quality healthcare services. Moreover, with the increasing number of health concerns around the world, the pressure on the healthcare industry has tremendously increased.
This has motivated healthcare institutions like hospitals and clinics to go digital and undertake digital transformation. Moreover, healthcare practitioners all across the globe are now relying on technology in one form or the other to provide healthcare services.
The latest technology enables physicians to seamlessly consult, diagnose and treat patients and improve the quality of the global healthcare industry. With technologies like mobile apps and IoT-enabled healthcare & fitness devices, one can avail high-end healthcare services from anywhere at any time and improve their quality of life.
Agriculture
Agriculture is one of the most crucial industries and is the largest revenue-generating sector in numerous economies. Naturally, the importance of the agricultural industry cannot be neglected.
It is commonly known that the agriculture industry largely relies on manual processes and, therefore, has a high workforce requirement. However, things are changing as the businesses in this industry are going through digital transformation.
In the present time, agriculture businesses are using smart technology like IoT to improve their efficiency. IoT is useful in various aspects of agriculture, such as examining soil conditions and predicting weather conditions. Moreover, there are numerous technologies such as smart IoT sensors that can make efficient decisions based on these analyses.
Additionally, the agriculture businesses are now able to sell their produce directly to the buyers, therefore eliminating middlemen and generating higher revenue. This makes digital transformation in the agriculture sector a promising investment.
Retail
As retail businesses are growing and expanding their operations, it is becoming more and more challenging to manage them. However, by taking their operations online and transforming them digitally, business operation management is a piece of cake for these businesses.
One of the most prominent examples in this context is enterprise application development, which is a complete solution for retail businesses. Using this application, businesses in the retail sector can sell their goods online to businesses, remotely manage their operations, provide an enhanced customer experience, and do a lot more.
Another technology that is popularly used by retail businesses is computer software. In the present time, there is a software for almost everything. Finance management, human resource management, client management, and inventory management are a few of the most prominent implementations of software in the retail sector.
Food & Dining
The dining industry is highly customer-centric and focuses on delivering the best possible experience to the customers. Since a large proportion of present-day diners are younger generations and tech-savvy, it is essential for businesses in the dining industry to go digital.
Today, numerous restaurant and cafe businesses benefit from digital technologies. The implementation of these technologies is visible in numerous aspects of their operations, such as order taking, food service, inventory management, customer relationship management, outlet management, and more.
Moreover, one of the latest and by far the most prominent implementation of digital technology in the dining sector is food delivery service. This concept is usually based on mobile applications and allows diners to order food online to their desired location.
Overall, if you aim to operate in the dining sector and generate high revenue, it is essential for your business to undertake digital transformation to deliver a high-end customer experience.
Banking
The banking sector involves conducting various processes on an everyday basis. However, it is commonly known that preciseness and accuracy are a must when it comes to finance-related processes. This objective is challenging to achieve with manually conducted processes that are prone to human error.
However, with digital transformation, banking institutions can automate their processes and increase their operational efficiency and generate precise results. With digital technologies for finance management, it is now possible to provide seamless banking services to bank account holders.
In the present time, people can manage their bank accounts from anywhere and conduct financial transactions. With technologies like cloud computing and mobile application, banking institutions are now offering reliable solutions to their customers.
Learning & Education
Apart from the healthcare sector, the education industry has also been tremendously affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Owing to the recent travel and gathering restrictions, it was highly challenging for not only educational institutions but also students to access quality education.
To overcome this challenge, the education sector tremendously shifted to digital technology. With terms like e-learning and online courses gaining massive popularity, today, there are numerous educational institutions that have shifted to online teaching mediums.
In the present time, learners can take online courses for almost everything, from educational courses to hobby courses and workshops. Some of the most popular technologies that facilitate online learning are e-learning websites, mobile apps, and software. This makes online education a promising form of learning in the future.
Looking at the benefits and implementations of digital transformation, you must be most certainly wondering, ‘How can I transform my business digitally’ right? Well, you must know that every technology has its own development process.
By choosing the right development team to build your digital product, you can ensure that your digital product is of optimal quality. The upcoming section will cover different types of development teams in detail.
Different Development Approaches That Facilitate Digital Transformation
Self Development
Here, the business owner undertakes the task of designing and developing their business’s digital product. With that being said, it is obvious that only business owners who are well-versed with the development process choose this approach.
However, it is commonly known that the process of developing a digital product involves numerous steps, and it is impossible for a single person to know everything about these steps. As a result, businesses that go for DIY development often end up compromising the quality of their digital platforms.
In-house Development Team
Here, a business hires a team of designers, developers, project managers, QA testers, and business analysts to work on the design and development project. However, it is not recommended to choose this approach unless you are looking to build a large-scale digital product.
Moreover, this is a highly cost-intensive approach and has numerous additional costs. For example, to hire a development team, you will have to spend additionally on infrastructure and human resource management, further boosting the cost investment.
Development Outsourcing
Development outsourcing is one of the most popularly chosen options among businesses looking to create a digital product. Generally speaking, there are two options when a business chooses to outsource its project’s design and development: hiring freelancer(s) and appointing an agency.
The final cost of the project, the time it will take to develop your digital product, and the quality of your platform will vary from one approach to another. Therefore, we recommend you carefully weigh the pros and cons before making a choice.
Here’s an expert tip: outsource your product’s design and development to an agency. This approach has the least development timeline and cost requirement and guarantees top-quality results.
This was it for the different types of development approaches a business can choose while planning to undertake digital transformation.
Summing It Up
We hope that by now, you are aware of the benefits of investing in digital technology and of the importance of digital transformation for your business.
By carefully analyzing your industry and choosing the right technology, you are certain to undertake seamless digital transformation and take your business online.
Overall, the future of the digital world is promising for businesses and is highly likely to grow to a greater extent. This makes digital transformation a must for every business at present.
