3 Essential Pillars of Digital Transformation to Help Your Company

Digital transformation is a broad term that most companies blindly understand. Oftentimes, their efforts barely scratch the surface and fail to crack the core of what needs to be changed. That is why many unsuccessfully integrate the concept into their business model.

Contrary to popular belief, it isn’t just merely shifting business operations online. It actually stands on 3 essential pillars to execute a holistic digital transformation: Customer Experience, Operational Process, and Business Model.

But first... what is Digital Transformation?

‍Digital transformation refers to the implementation of digital tech to simplify and streamline the company’s work processes on different levels. It involves everything from the very structure of the business model down to specific in-house processes.

It’s a modern approach to adapt to the ever-changing world as a means to raise profitability, improve customer experience, and boost overall workforce productivity. Especially amidst the on-going COVID-19 pandemic, digital transformation is crucial to ensure business continuity given the safety protocols that limit any kind of physical interactions.

As simple as it sounds, it requires a deeper understanding of how to achieve it holistically. Several companies make mistaken assumptions that digital transformation is just a one-time project and that the IT department can manage it alone.

Those are just some of the many common mistakes that lead to wasted time and resources. Nobody wants that. So to prevent this from happening, it’s important to structure your innovation strategy with the right foundations.

3 pillars of digital transformation for a fool-proof integration

1. Customer Experience Digital Transformation

Based on recent studies, 45.9% of businesses worldwide put customer experience as their top priority, followed by 33.6% on product development, and 20.5% on pricing.

It wasn’t like this before. This year, more than ever, revealed the importance of investing in customer experience to generate sales and revenues for companies. According to Forbes, customer-centric organizations were 60% more profitable than those that don’t.

There’s a lot of aspects to create a more satisfying customer experience. Here are some of the factors that should be considered:

• Integrate multiple sales channels: Make your product accessible to your target market. Having multiple channels will provide a more convenient user experience as well as providing a wider reach. More reach means more customers, and more customers mean more sales!
• Come up with compelling marketing schemes: There’s a lot of marketing schemes that you can do online that would have been otherwise difficult if conducted physically. Take advantage of going digital and brainstorm with your marketing team on how to promote your product better. It can be through ads, influencer marketing, and many more.
• Strengthen community management: Think of your community management team as a retail worker, but online. Customers may have a lot of questions and concerns about your product, and you have to be ready to answer them swiftly and precisely. It’s necessary to accommodate all these to hold their interest and, potentially, promote sales conversions.
• Set attractive price points: Of course, price points are big factors that influence customer purchase decisions. Think of a reasonable price based on new sets of product costs now that you don’t need to consider physical rent, staff manpower, and more. Instead, you have to consider delivery fee, website maintenance, digital team workforce, and the likes to come up with the right amount.

2. Operational Process Transformation

Operational Process Transformation basically refers to the internal aspect of digital transformation. There’s a concept called “process modeling” which highlights adding value at each stage of your business operations. Here are three components that you can look at:

• Process Digitization talks about utilizing automotive features to boost workforce productivity by simplifying processes to do tasks more efficiently at a quicker pace.
• Worker Enablement considers the new roles and tasks that digital transformation entails. You’ll be required to have a digital team and you have to set objectives and responsibilities for them to focus on.
• Performance Management gives executives real-time analytics and feedback from their various sales channels. Managers can use this information to better allocate resources to different platforms (website, mobile application, social media, etc.) as needed.

 All these combined perpetuate a better flow of information and team synergy, which encapsulates the very essence of digital transformation.

3. Business Model Transformation

Last, but probably the toughest pillar to build, is the Business Model Transformation.

Aside from convenience, you have to show customers what’s your purpose for going digital. You need to stand out from your competitors by creating disruptive innovations that can add value to the market.

One research illustrated Waze as an example. Instead of just being an online map application, it paved the way for the transportation sector to build a collaborative vehicle GPS. Users can contribute routes to help fellow drivers get to their destination faster with its smart navigation, real-time traffic updates, and voice commands.

The real-time traffic updates is the social aspect of Waze. Drivers can alert the application and share information about road blocks, traffic jams, accidents, etc. It focused on the community aspect of the typical GPS system, which became its main differentiator.

Remember that shifting digitally doesn’t only encompass transferring all your resources online. It needs to be different and valuable enough for consumers to generate sales. Otherwise, there would be no point in your efforts.

With all these in mind, does your company stand on key pillars of digital transformation?

Digital transformation is a tough case to crack. Handling the customer experience, operational process, and business model development cannot be done by just a single person or department alone.

You would need key specialized leaders who are equipped with the right knowledge and skill sets to conceptualize strategies and lead employees in implementing necessary changes. That’s how the right foundation can be built.

In case you’re looking for qualified talent to help you on this aspect, get in touch with JB Hired and source the talent your digital transformation needs!