BUSINESSES AND THE JOURNEY TO DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
Change is inevitable. This is a common reality that we all face in most aspects of our lives. Sometimes, we ourselves look for it, sometimes it comes to us. Whether or not it is our decision to go thru this process, the best course of action is to embrace and adapt.
For every business, may it be a start-up, SME or a big MNC, it has been seen that their performances vary greatly depending on how well they adapt with the times. While digitalization is sure paving its’ way as the next method for businesses, there is a common agreement that the arrival of COVID 19 in early February accelerated this move.
It did leave me wondering — -Is digital transformation the new survival mode for businesses? And if so, how does it help them with their target market?
I spoke with some founders to shed some light on this.
WHAT IS DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION?
” Digital transformation is the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business, fundamentally changing how you operate and deliver value to customers. It’s also a cultural change that requires organizations to continually challenge the status quo, experiment, and get comfortable with failure.”[i]
In the said definition, the ultimate big words that resonated are “digital technology”. Digital technology is part of the whole ecosystem deemed as the next big revolution in the history of mankind — — Industry 4.0.
According to Forbes.com, “…as Industry 4.0 unfolds, computers are connected and communicate with one another to ultimately make decisions without human involvement.”[ii]
What it essentially mean to my layman brain, they have been programming computerization and machines working as if they are on steroid.
For Hendry Goh, Director of Strategy at Neo360 Agency, Digital transformation is very much welcome as it may boost efficiency. However, boosting efficiency has other factors to consider.
“Digital transformation goes far deeper beyond the digital marketing that my agency goes through. In its true form, we believe the digital transformation involves rethinking how the organisation serves its ideal buyer persona in a highly responsive and relevant manner — esp in the light of the global pandemic. It will only boost efficiency if the entire organisation is able to adapt to the process, cultural, mindset changes required in digital transformation.”
Hendry mentioned a really important point. In all things, may it be business or not, any change even if intended for good, will have a measure of success if the people who it was intended to help only if they embrace it wholeheartedly and not blindly. Any resistance from the users, may it be conscious or not, will delay any supposedly progress and intended efficiency that the technology is attempting to fix.
It leads me back to my original question — — Is digitalization the new survival mode for businesses? I asked Kevon Cheung, Co-founder of Toasty.ai (a video meeting platform) of this.
“In today’s world, everything is moving so fast. If we’re not using digital tools to run our business, we will not be able to compete.
I see digitalization in two ways: one is to automate and reduce time spent on certain repetitive tasks. The other one is to provide targeted and personalized information to enhance the user experience.”
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AS A LEVERAGE
This also highlights the fact that Digital Transformation for business is not just used as a form of survival method but as LEVERAGE against competitors. Most especially as our society has put heavy emphasis on the customer experience.
For example, if I am craving for a cheeseburger and it is heavily raining outside, I would have 2 options.
Option 1: Take my umbrella and walk over to the nearest burger restaurant to fulfill my cheeseburger cravings. However, in doing this, I will run the risk of getting terribly wet and will affect my mood.
Option 2: Take my phone. Find an app who can deliver to my house my cheeseburger meal. However in doing this, I will have to pay extra for the delivery charge.
Personally, considering the scenario of heavy rain, I would choose the latter option. It will be more expensive for me and yet a business that can deliver to my house in that very moment of hunger and craving is regarded as my problem solver. My customer experience will be definitely much better in that case. And that, is the leverage that of a more digitalized business.
Now that we have been more enlightened with what is Digital Transformation, let’s ask what digital tools Hendry and Kevon have been using for their organizations…
DIGITAL TOOLS AVAILABLE FOR BUSINESSES
Hendry: The agency adopts a 360 marketing strategy with the starting point being the agency buyer persona — for this example, the medical professionals and specialists who owns their own practice….The agency leverage on a marketing automation tool like Hubspot as the starting point to understand the buyer journey better. For content amplification and paid media buy, the agency focuses on social media marketing through Facebook and Instagram, Google Display and Google Search.
Kevon: Our creation of Toasty came from our observation that there are many video meeting tools out there, but none of them really focused on the interactivity and collaboration between participants.
So we focused a lot of 3 things: 1) Content & SEO, 2) LinkedIn Engagement, and 3) Slack communities.
The goal is to combine short-term strategies with long-term ones. Most of our strategies are around content so copywriting is super important to us. We mainly use Hootsuite to schedule the content to go out and also publish the articles on our Wordpress blog. And of course once we curate our own subscribers, we share best tips and onboarding knowledge with our users through Mailerlite.
IN CONCLUSION
Almost all businesses have been jumping on the bandwagon of digitalization since COVID-19 hit our shores. While some are pushed to avoid extinction, others have been long planning the arrival of Digital Transformation. What has been prevalent during my interviews to these 2 founders is that Digital Transformation is supposed to help the organization to automate some repetitive tasks to make way for more time in strategic planning as well as totally enhancing their customers’ experience.
My takeaway — It is and has always been intended to usher both businesses and customers to enter the new era of Industry 4.0.
The success or failure now lies on how well we embrace it.
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[1] https://enterprisersproject.com/what-is-digital-transformation
