Digital Transformation: How to get started

Technology has completely transformed customer expectations in almost all industries, and many businesses are turning to digital transformation (DX) to create leaner, more productive organisations that can provide consistent customer experiences worthy of the digital age.

But DX is less confusing than you may think. It’s all about using digital technology and software platforms to optimise your operational processes and translate customer data into real-world insights that will inform your business strategy.

Why DX matters

According to IDC Directions 2019, the top five benefits of DX are:

• Increased employee productivity
• Improved customer retention
• Better customer acquisition
• Higher customer satisfaction
• More revenue

That’s an impressive list, and the way effective DX achieves those benefits comes down to its power to integrate all your business processes into an easy-to-manage portal.

DX aims to bring business functions such as sales, marketing, customer service, fulfilment and accounts together with seamless data flow between each business department. That gives all your team members a real-time view of the entire customer journey and the ability to smooth out any bottlenecks to ensure the best customer experience possible.

From a management perspective, DX also makes good on the promises of the big data revolution. DX platforms aim to translate customer data into real business analytics and insights that you can use to inform your decision-making and strategy planning.

Getting Started

A helpful first step is to audit your existing business processes to identify workflow bottlenecks and redesign your operational framework where required. This will help you create a clear roadmap of how your organisation runs, and which DX platforms can be applied to best bring these processes together in a free-flowing customer journey pipeline.

As DX relies on the fast flow of data between software applications, designing a server infrastructure that can cope with this data load is vital. You’ll need to decide between an on-premises, cloud or hybrid server topology that best suits your needs.

On-premises servers provide better control over your sensitive data, but tend to come with a higher capex investment; cloud servers are a cost-effective solution with good scalability, but you’ll need to trust your data security to the cloud vendor; and the hybrid approach combines the best of both worlds.

The human side of DX

Don’t be fooled into thinking effective DX is just about technology. A thorough DX rollout will likely change how your business operates at a fundamental process level, and that means your employees are going to need to adapt – and fast.

How you manage that change will play an important role in determining the success of your DX project. To achieve the cultural change required, you’ll need buy-in from all levels of the organisation. While you’ll need resounding support from upper management and board level, don’t forget the frontline staff who will be using these new tools on a daily basis.

Consult with employees about their challenges and encourage them to play an active role in determining how a DX rollout will solve them. If your team can see how DX will benefit the business while making their job easier, they’ll be more likely to embrace it.

For more information about how to get your digital transformation started, check out Digital Transformation: What it is and why you should care.