Why Digital Transformation is happening and what you need to do about it

Ready or not digital transformation is reinventing business as we know it. Every enterprise including yours now faces a choice between innovation or extinction. Digital transformation is not specifically about IT or technology, it’s about redefining your entire business strategy perhaps even changing your corporate culture. To succeed in digital your company should think of technology not just as a support function but as a strategic competency. Digital transformation is not just about applying technology to your business, it’s actually about creating entirely new business models on the backbone of technology.

Amazon.com was not just a shop with a website. It forever disrupted and revolutionized the entire concept of shopping and more. It’s now imperative for every business to adapt you and take advantage of the ways the digital world has radically changed consumer behavior and expectations. Your customers, your channels and your competitors have already gone digital as of 2017. Mobile devices dominate total minutes spent online searching, reading email, browsing and buy. That’s globally from 71% of the US to 91% in Indonesia and 67% of millennials, 56% of Gen Xers 41% of baby boomers and 28% of seniors prefer to shop online rather than in store and it’s not just for retail consumers, 55% of B2B buyers say they search for product or vendor information on social media. According to a 2017 cloud carry study, 55% of B2B buyers accept mobile access to a sellers e-commerce platform. Even your own products employees and business operations are already dependent on digital technologies.

The digital transformation continues to accelerate for two main reasons. First, technology is evolving at an exponential rate. Second, data is far more plentiful and usable. Mastering emerging technology has always made the difference between companies being competitive or barely keeping up. What makes today’s digital transformation different is the extreme importance of data. Not just big batches of data but real-time data. Data about your consumers, data about your competitors, data about your supply chain, data about your markets. Having this data and knowing how to use it pulls your critical business decisions out of the shadow of opinion for guesswork and brings intelligent options into the light instantly so your business can do new things and do things right.

Digital Transformation has the potential to level the playing field. It provides low-cost tools and enables strategies that give small and medium-sized businesses a fighting chance to compete at the same level as major enterprises. Successful companies that have disrupted an entire industry often did so by changing business models and processes in ways that vastly improve the customer experience. Data is what makes these new models possible. Digital Transformation depends on data and data depends on the effective collection, cybersecurity analytics, and application. Get the data, protect the data, analyze the data then utilize the data. These are the essentials of a digital transformation and these are the essential skills that your company will either have to outsource, hire or train an upscale from the inside.

Do you have a digital transformation strategy?

According to a 2017 Forrester report, 74% of business executives say their company has a digital strategy but only 15% believe that their company has the skills and capabilities to execute on that strategy. Digitally transforming your organization changes everything. It changes your corporate strategy It changes your business processes It changes your marketing capabilities It even changes the roles and skills you need to fill in order to bridge the gaps between your company and the technology you need to master. Digital transformation isn’t just about technology. It’s also about aligning your teams and processes to foster innovation.