What is digital transformation? It is the organizational, cultural and operational change of a company, ecosystem or industry through an amalgamation of digital technologies, procedures and competencies of all functions and levels in a strategic way.
Digital transformation, abbreviated as DT utilizes technologies to create new services and value for multiple stakeholders, invent and acquire abilities to adapt to altering circumstances.
Current world events delivered a repetitive and eye-opening message to the world of business that markets can turn upside down in a fraction of a second.
While companies have to constantly adjust their business strategies with changing times, they also have to move forward with new ideas of serving people.
Digital transformation – Its impact on the business context
The term ‘digital transformation’ is mainly used in the context of businesses and it also has an effect on other institutions like public sector companies, governments and organizations that are working in handling societal challenges like senior population and pollution by using one or many of the latest emerging technologies.
In some nations like Japan, DT also sets its impact on various aspects like with the Society 5.0 initiative o the country.
It is actually the havoc transformation of organizational and business activities, procedures, models and competencies to leverage the opportunities and changes of an integration of digital technologies and their impact.
Common threads of digital transformation across industries
Although it is true that the roadmap of digital transformation looks a bit different in every company but there are certainly few common threads like.
- Digital transformation or DT requires hectic planning, including buy-in from the executive team. Leaders who can plan a vision by keeping digital first and monitoring ROI, they are most likely to succeed.
- The new experiences are driven by personalization and they deal with underpinning successful digital transformation strategies. Each company has to decide on the best way of implementing customization for their unique circumstances. If you blindly follow a one-size-fits-all approach, you’re definitely going to fail.
- The experienced tailored to the individuals need consistent streams of including high quality content. Artificial intelligence and marketing automation can take off the pressure of content creators but this technology has to be employed strategically. It shouldn’t be used for empathy, human intelligence and creativity.
Digital Transformation – How does it matter?
A business may choose to try digital transformation for more reasons than one. Nevertheless, till now, the most common reason has been the issue of survival.
During this pandemic situation, the ability of a company to adapt to the disruptions of the supply chain, to market pressures and altering customer expectations has become even more crucial.
The priorities of spending of consumers also speak of the reality. As per 2020 International Data Corporation (IDC), spending on DT of business products, practices and companies continue at a rapid pace in spite of the challenges that are brought in by the COVID-19 pandemic.
IDC predicts that global expenditure on DT technologies will grow 11% in 2020 and reach $1.3 trillion. This can be compared to the 17% growth in 2019 but still it is considered as the brightest spots of 2020 due to the drastic reduction of tech expenditure.
It is rather too early to understand which consumer behavior will stick through time. However experts say that on the perspective of the consumers, the dependency on digital technology has been accelerating in every single category.
One more vital factor to take note of is the degree to which forced change will revert back whenever possible. 3 out of 4 Americans tried the new shopping behavior.
COVID-19 pandemic – How it altered digital transformation
We have seen this Coronavirus crisis reshape both the ‘how’ and ‘what’ of companies’ agendas of digital transformation.
Currently, a large portion of remote workforce experiences a nice digital technology as now they entirely depend on this technology to get things done. This gets the problem-solving focus which was long awaited and deserved.
Therefore, any digital experience platform and other services are crucial to the success of transformation projects. If you still haven’t started embracing digital transformation technology, this is high time you do so in order to avoid falling behind your competitors.