Digital transformation is here and is revolutionizing how businesses operate, achieve their goals, boost their revenue, and better the customer experiences. Knowing how to speed up digital transformation means setting yourself up for a better tomorrow.
With the COVID-19 crisis, businesses, corporates, and companies have had to make a major shift to speed up the digital transformation from analog ways of operation to digital ways of operation.
Today’s customer is all digital and needs a business that knows how to cater to their needs by offering and delivering services/products in a very digitized manner.
Even as businesses around the globe continue to reel from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, many forward-thinking IT leaders are using the disruption as an opportunity to advance and speed up their digital transformation plans.
Digital technologies are being used to create and modify existing business processes, culture, and customer experiences to meet changing requirements of customers and to capture new market opportunities.
Reimagining your brand through the lens of digitization reveals not only improved ways to tell your brand story but also new strategies to upscale and deliver remarkable customer experiences.
7 simple ways you can use to speed up digital transformation implementation
Here are 7 simple ways you can use to speed up digital transformation.
Leverage effective digital technologies that people really want
Choose a time management tool that will help your team be more productive and cooperative. You will then be able to invest your time and efforts wisely in speeding up the digital transformation.
Examples of project management tools are Trello, Asana, and Wrike. You need to know what their uses could be, understand their functions, and take advantage of the big data and information you collate.
Doing so can boost the product or service quality as well as work productivity. These three are the best and will help you and your team enhance productivity.
Use tools such as TimeCamp, Hubstaff, Harvest, and Toogi. These assist in measuring each member’s performance in relation to their assigned tasks. It gives them an insight into how they perform.
Use Automated digital tools such as Sprout Social, HubSpot’s Social Tool, Buffer, and Hootsuite.
Save more time by using social media marketing tools for your business. You will be able to create content in advance and schedule them in simultaneously.
Enhance cybersecurity, E-commerce systems & financial technologies
Security is often considered important but not taken as a priority by many businesses but you could have dire consequences in case your data security is threatened.
This could even close down your business and halt the speed up of digital transformation. This could lead to breaches in the system.
Given that the digital world is infinite, many viruses and cyber incidents are likely to happen and this is something that a CIO or executive cannot ignore. Teach your employees to change their passwords.
Make sure they know how to create strong passwords. Remind your team to turn this into a habit. To further strengthen your security, you can also utilize the Dashlane software.
Implement Virtual Private Networks (VPN) connections between your office locations. These protect your network, especially if you are connected through public Wi-Fi services. Make sure that all your connections are secured by VPNs.
Implement AdBlocker, which can be installed as a trusted cybersecurity feature in your internet browser, protecting you as you browse the internet. The chance of bugs entering your computers will significantly decrease if there is something that automatically blocks ads.
Use Two Factor Authentication such as Authy or Google Authenticator; it will help prevent hacking incidents, as there will inevitably be attempts from hackers to bypass codes or to log into work emails to get hold of sensitive information.
Develop user-friendly digital systems
Developing user-friendly digital systems for use will help speed up your digital transformation by far. The systems should be efficient, easy to navigate, easy to install and remove, easy to operate, without the need for third-party software, effective in handling errors, and should abide by set standards.
Do not underestimate the importance of the user-friendliness of the systems. Ensure it is easy to install, update, and remove. Whether the new digital system is an operating system or a single-client user application, always make sure that it is simple, clear, and documented.
The software should also be easy to uninstall or remove. A digital system is built to support and perform daily tasks and functions that machines could do to lessen the struggles of the human workforce.
It also allows for more output in less time. Make sure that digital systems meet certain qualifications that make them user-friendly. In other words – ensure that the purpose of having digital technology is justified.
Convince members of the business organization to be open to digital transformation
One of the greatest challenges of adapting to the digital transformation is the risk-averse culture in which we live. In order to address this, some solutions are needed. Word-of-mouth campaigns are sometimes not enough.
Digital transformation must be embraced in corporate policies or emphasized in the core values of the company. You should be effective and efficient in persuading the resistant members of the business organization to openly embrace digital transformation.
The company culture will always resist new digital disruption and technology. However, gradually encouraging people to adopt the benefits and advantages of these digital technologies can allow the entire community of workers and even customers to adjust to the new technology.
The business will operate effectively if this evolution of technology is supported rather than rejected or completely ignored.
Stop buying solutions that weren’t designed for you
There is a real sales culture in the region with people buying pre-existing ‘off the shelf solutions, then trying to make them work in their business. Each business is unique, with its customers and its own set of problems.
Unless a solution was designed to fix these specific issues, it is going to be hard to make it work and speed up your digital transition. There needs to be more capability in the region to create tailor-made solutions locally.
Understand your problem first and then look to what technology is available at the time to fix it.
Don’t race to use the latest hyped technology and then go looking for a problem for it to fix — that’s like putting the cart before the horse.
Solve problems today, plan for tomorrow
If you want to avoid pitfalls on your digital transformation journey, outsource complex tasks to a trusted partner who knows the way. As much as you would like to engage your current team to drive complex technology-enabled change, they might not be sufficiently trained with the new technologies to move quickly and actionize todays plans to build a better tomorrow.
Accelerate change and maximize efficiency by tapping external experts. For instance, hiring managed IT services for your digital transformation initiative takes the heat off your internal IT resources who may already be overloaded supporting your current business.
This will help them perform better in the tasks ahead and prepare them better as they have more time to work on capitalizing the business plans.
By partnering with a skilled and knowledgeable third party, your employees can stay focused and knowledge can be transferred through the process. In this way, your team will learn from the experts, thereby equipping them with the capabilities they need to tackle future transformational projects.
Clearly define and evangelize your mission/vision to the organization
When the U.S. started shutting down in March following similar moves in Asia and Europe, educational software company ExamSoft saw a huge uptick in sales of its remote proctoring product, ExamMonitor.
With the sudden demand for their new product, they needed organizational alignment around the company’s direction and strategy.
Doing this work as soon as the crisis hit removed the stumbling blocks many transformational initiatives faced as the pandemic altered their plans.
Instead of wasting time trying to figure out how each group would respond, everyone started on the same page since they had already set objectives and goals, therefore, there was no need to remind each person what needed to happen to speed up digital transformation.
This example serves as a good reminder to revisit your organization’s mission/vision consistently throughout your digital transformation journey, especially when you get to a crossroads.
