The term “digital transformation” doesn’t just mean one thing. In fact, it can be interpreted and put into practice in many different ways depending on your company’s needs. No matter how you decide to implement a digital transformation, however, it can have a significant impact on your products, services, and customer satisfaction. It can affect every aspect of your business and result in better efficiency across teams.

Developing a strategic approach to technology and how you choose to implement digital elements into your processes is important. Digital advancements can strengthen your company, help achieve business goals, and support growth.

Here, Steven Osprey, Director of Microsoft Solutions, explains how implementing a digital transformation can help your business get that extra push in the right direction.

Why you need to consider a digital transformation strategy

Your business might be functional; however, you could be missing out on opportunities for growth, expansion, and development by avoiding change.

Pressing issues such as client and employee retention, and even recruitment, might take the forefront of your attention, leaving digital as a forgotten element of your business. However, digital transformation can assist in these areas. It is more than upgrading technology, it can have a significant impact on your company’s progression. It won’t only benefit your employees but also your clients. 

Digital transformation can attract jobseekers

During a time where jobseekers are running recruitment with increasing selectivity, it is vital for businesses to appeal to them in order to acquire high-quality new talent. Bringing in stronger recruits is crucial for the growth of your business.

As a younger generation of recruitment appears, they expect high-quality levels of technology, as standard, that are efficient for their roles. Making sure you provide access to technology which is beneficial for the performance of your employees should be a priority. This can include updated software, accessible hardware, and technology which automates repetitive tasks. Clunky or out-of-date technology is likely to frustrate younger team members much more than their older colleagues, which could affect your ability to engage and retain new hires.

A young workforce can bring new ideas and insights, but you need to make sure your technology and company’s digital aspects reflect their expectations to appeal to this new workforce. This means ensuring systems are streamlined and easy to access, with no workarounds like clunky multiple logins or awkward, old-fashioned navigation.

Find opportunities for growth

No matter your industry, technology and digital influence all business processes. Whether you want to improve customer communications or your recruitment process, implementing digital transformation can assist with this.  A digital transformation strategy can help you identify the key areas of your business where potential improvements lie, and implement the technologies and processes required to drive ongoing business growth.

Improve and support your decision making

Reliance on different systems can cause communication barriers between teams, and by integrating these systems into one centralised hub, you can improve the functionality of your work. Integrating your software applications can make it much more straightforward for your employees to gather the information they need to make data-driven decisions.

Making sure your technology works together to create an interlinked infrastructure can lead to less human error and duplication efforts across teams. Your efficiency, and thus productivity, will improve as teams don’t waste crucial time inputting data across multiple systems. Not only will the data be continually maintained and updated, but teams will also be able to access it more easily. This can encourage data-driven decisions which impact the business as a whole, as teams can input collaboratively.

By investing in new technology, you can automate time-consuming and repetitive tasks. Instead, your employees can spend more time improving client services and a more personalised customer experience without the distraction of manual data management.

Grow your business

Digital transformation can aid your business growth as you use data management and analysis to get an insight into your business’s progression, the development of your competitors, and the movement of the market. This can also give you an understanding of consumer activity regarding your products and services, allowing for stronger decision-making based on the current demands of your clients.

Each business has an accumulation of data. Using this to your advantage through digital transformation can see you achieve a competitive edge. Data management systems and solutions can help you find patterns and trends within your data and uncover clues to what your business should focus on and invest in.

Using systems such as microsoft 365 planner can better manage your data and processes to get the most out of what is already available to your company. This can identify the correct pieces of data and make them accessible to those who need it to make informed decisions an easier process. Investing in digital transformation can benefit from finding new growth opportunities that unlock a competitive edge, even in saturated or disrupted markets.

Be prepared for change

With the desire to work from home shifting the way many employees work, it is more important than ever that businesses are prepared for change and that their technology reflects this. The workplace has been through a transformation, so digital transformation should keep up with these new expectations. There are countless success stories of businesses that were able to get their teams up and running from their kitchen tables in record time.

As businesses adjust to new ways of working, with 43% of workers wanting flexibility and 39% wanting adjustments, your digital transformation should enable this. In order to accommodate this quick change, many companies put in place fast measures. However, because necessity dictated speed when setting up these remote working solutions, businesses are starting to discover that the systems they’ve put in place are not fit for long-term use.

Adopting a digital transformation can mean your business is set up for the unexpected in the long term, reducing disruptions no matter the future. As something becomes a permanent fixture in the workplace, remote working needs to simply work, with no workarounds and no compromises.

Supporting your business’s future

Taking advantage of new updates and developments in the digital world can ensure your business is up to speed with the future of technology, allowing you to provide the best service to your customers. Investing in new technology can mean that updates are efficient and non-disruptive. Software as a service (SaaS), for example, will automatically update software, no matter the device’s location. This means your business can benefit from new features and take advantage of performance improvements and efficiencies as soon as they’re available.

There are many advantages to digital transformation and finding the right balance for your company is important. Investing in new technology and updates allows you to stay ahead of competitors, analyse better data insights, and improve company efficiency. While your methods currently might be working, leading your focus to immediate changes, such as recruitment, and preparing your company for future unpredictability is important. Most crucially, digital transformation, when implemented correctly, can only improve your business and encourage growth.

Sources:

https://enterprisersproject.com/what-is-digital-transformation

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/digital-transformation-reduce-human-...

https://www.cognitiveautomation.com/resources/unlock-new-growth-opp...

https://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/article/1747315/half-employees-w....