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How can you keep your business models viable?

Well, through digital transformation. When business leaders hear of digital transformation, the majority immediately think of technology.

However, it is more than that; it has more to do with how you leverage that technology and integrate it into your business processes to meet the shifting market requirements and customer demands.

According to research by IDG, 44% of businesses have fully adopted a digital business model, while 89% plan on making the shift. Digital Transformation isn’t all that simple. Lack of dedicated IT skills, evolving customer needs, and ineffective data management are some challenges that you may face.

With the help of technologies and software like OCR Software and content Intelligence in domains of digital transformation you can derive insights from data and maximize your business growth opportunities.

In this article, we’ll look at the 5 key domains for successful digital transformation.

Let’s get started

1. Customers

Customers value their experience with brands, above everything else. This extends to social media platforms, as well as online and offline stores.

With traditional marketing channels, there are hardly any opportunities for customers to express their pain points, either through reviews or comments.

However, this poses a challenge because it doesn’t leave you with enough time to adapt to shifting demands. To make matters worse, customers who have a bad experience will often desert your brand without giving an explanation, making it one of the silent business killers.

A critical part of digital transformation domains is changing your customer experience.

Customer service differentiates you from your competition.

Instead of leveraging economies of scale like mass production and communication, transforming to a customer-centric approach keeps your customers strongly connected, ultimately enhancing loyalty to your business.

Digital technologies, such as live chat platforms, change how you bond with your customers. According to statistics by Kayako, 52% of consumers are more likely to remain loyal to a business that offer live chat support.

Customers have a synergistic relationship; they are dynamically connected, making them better influencers compared to ads, in their interactions with each other. 

Exploiting customer networks ultimately shapes your brand reputation. 

6 years ago, Lebara initiated a digital transformation program. 

However, it needed to introduce changes to deliver a seamless omnichannel user experience. N-iX experts developed a single master data system for online and offline channels where website users could buy, register, or activate their SIM cards, or buy and change plans.

2. Data

Previously, you could collect data from your business processes like sales and marketing, and leverage it to evaluate, forecast, and make decisions. Managing this data required the acquisition and maintenance of Huge IT systems.

In addition to that, working with traditional data warehouses has its challenges, which include, but not limited to:

  • High failure and cost rates, 
  • Inflexible architecture, and 
  • Slow, degrading performance

On the other hand, today you can get unstructured data from social media, email conversations, and supply chain sensors. This creates unexpected patterns that you cannot readily decode to create more value for your business.

Digital transformation domains are not limited to traditionally offline brands. In fact, they work to bring fragmented platforms and data points together across your business’s wider ecosystem, whether online or offline.

With cloud-based systems, it is becoming cheaper, accessible, and easier to store data, that you can then apply to assess, predict, and make decisions.

According to a survey by the International Data Group, 73% of businesses are already using cloud computing in various capacities.

True digital transformation with data works to refine and implement unified tools, data management, and data analytics to give you accurate data insight. You are able to understand and align real-time data across all platforms.

“Big data” permits you to discover unpredictable business pursuits, new sources of value, and  generate new expectations for business growth.

When a series of integrations and acquisitions was added to Johnson Controls company, it added to the complexity of operations. So they needed to maintain a clear view of their customer engagement.

Upon turning to Walker to standardize their CX program, they were able to resolve data duplication and inconsistencies challenges. These data insights created a visual journey map that allowed them to gather feedback form their largest customers.

3. Innovation

In today’s highly competitive business environment, innovation is among the domains of digital transformation that is vital to your success, especially with the changing customer demands. 

According to BDC, investing in innovation is the key to 11% annual business growth experienced by Premier Tech over the last 25 years.

Conventionally, innovation in businesses was limited and costly. 

High costs were mainly experienced when testing fresh concepts which were on demand. 

As a result, new ideas were developed, tested, and taken to the market with the main focus on the finished product. This was based on the intuition and analysis by business managers who hoped to eliminate high costs of failure.

However, through digital transformation, you can leverage different technologies that offer various innovation approaches. These enable you to improve sales, boost your market position, and reduce waste, instead of constantly reacting to market shifts.

By continuous learning through rapid experimentation, it becomes faster and easier to test ideas and get market feedback from the beginning of the innovation process to its completion. 

This innovation approach focuses on minimum viable prototypes and careful experiments that reduce costs and maximize learning. 

Real customers then validate your assumptions, allowing you to develop or improve products iteratively through a time and cost effective process.

An example of innovation as one of the domains of digital transformation is The Design Print by the use of Google ventures. It is a five-days process that answers crucial business questions through prototyping, design, and testing ideas.

Working together in a sprint enables you to cut short the endless debate cycle and compress work.

4. Value

The digital era is rapidly changing. 

According to IDC global digital transformation, 65% of the global GDP will be digitalized by 2022.  Therefore, you must be prepared to adapt early and continually leverage new technologies to create value for your customers. 

The way customers view your business defines your value proposition. Previously, your value proposition was seen as fairly constant because you could simply improve processes, update products, and refresh marketing campaigns. 

However, customers are now more aware of the value they expect from businesses. Some are even more technologically savvy than the businesses pushing products on them.

Value, as one of the key domains for successful digital transformation, requires you to reimagine your business value proposition from a customer’s perspective. 

For example, you can use predictive analytics to understand customer habits and stay connected digitally on social media platforms to monitor trends and product opinions. This way, you can give customers value by maintaining a consistent customer experience. 

In addition to that, content is part of the value exchange journey. Instead of underutilizing valuable content due to broken systems, outdated approaches, and clunky content engines, you can leverage Content Intelligence platforms. 

It interprets, analyzes, and compiles rich content, visitor data, and engagement that enables you to fuel the buyer’s journey.

Uber is one of the tech companies that has a unique value proposition. With one tap, you can get a car that comes directly to you. The payment is cashless and the driver knows exactly where to go. This fully contrasts the typical experience of getting a taxi.

5. Competition

One of the digital transformation domains you cannot afford to ignore is competition.

It is not only taking place from other businesses within your industry but also those outside due to the rising demand for product variations by customers.

As every business is in a rush to acquire new customers, especially with the digital migration, failure to adopt some of these strategies can lead to failure. According to a study by Synchrony, 47% of customers have placed a significant focus on retail apps.

So, let’s assume that you don’t have a retail app for your business, you will be missing out on potential customers while your competition will be getting a bigger scoop.

By digitizing your business model with big data analytics technology, you can gain more insight into your market and improve your business operation efficiencies. 

From intelligent narrative generators and business analytics tools, to artificial intelligence and machine learning, you can leverage smart decision making, automation, and reduce your cost of doing business.

The insight you gain from these digital technologies gives you a competitive advantage. 

In addition to that, innovative applications of artificial intelligence, such as generative design enhances your creativity, giving you an upper hand in the market.

Bertice Jenson, who owns an electronic’s store, couldn’t believe it when a couple pointed at a smartphone and immediately went on to compare prices online. The online store the customers were comparing prices with was Amazon. 

Although she wanted them to buy from her store, it was highly possible that they would purchase it from Amazon.

Conclusion

Clearly, it is not the most cunning but rather the most intelligent business that survives.

According to Grand View Research, the digital transformation market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 23.6% by 2028. 

This is due to growing demand for the latest technologies, such as Intelligent Document Processing and artificial intelligence that are promoting the adoption of data-rich analytics.

Having gone through the 5 key domains for successful digital transformation, such as customers, data, and value, I hope you can adapt digital technologies to level up your business.

Ready to get started?

One of the easiest points to start is by incorporating an AI-powered OCR software into your data extraction and analysis to secure documents and improve business processes.

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