What is Digital Transformation?
Digital transformation is the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business, leading to fundamental changes in how a business operates and the value it delivers to its consumers. Simply put, it’s about transforming the way a business engages with its consumers.
The New, Digitally Conscious Consumer
Mobile devices, applications, machine learning, automation and much more allow consumers to get what they want ‘on demand’ or at the exact time they want it. What’s more, these new digital technologies have caused a shift in consumer expectations, resulting in a new kind of modern buyer. To accommodate the new, modern-day buyer, businesses need to think digital too.
Getting Started with Digital Transformation
Digital transformation provides organizations with an opportunity to better understand the modern buyer, engage with them and deliver on their expectations of a multi-channel consumer experience.
Below are three ways to help your organization get started with a digital transformation.
1. An agile, adaptable IT environment
Possessing the right technology to power up digital strategies is fundamental in the business world. Organizations recognize the need for implementing agile systems and that cloud technology is critical to digital transformation. The cloud enables organizations to be fast, flexible and dynamic– giving your organization the capability to evaluate new projects that are cost-effective and low-risk– making it possible to use technology to satisfy consumer demands quicker.
By easily connecting Software as a Service (SaaS) applications such as consumer databases, Big Data analytics, web and mobile apps, your organization can digitally record all touch-points to create a 360-degree view of the consumer. By utilizing this data, the organization will understand how, when and why its consumers choose to do business with it. In addition, your business can deliver a better, more enhanced consumer experience.
2. Personalized consumer experiences
At present, buyers want organizations to treat them as unique individuals and know their personal preferences and purchase history. 75% of consumers admit being most likely to purchase from an organization that:
- Identifies them by their name,
- Understands their purchase history, and
- Suggests products based upon their past purchases.
With a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, your organization can evaluate, and research customer-related data based upon a consumers’ previous interactions with your organization. The organization can also obtain a good understanding of its buyers by evaluating general requests, product quotes and support inquiries. This data can then be used to create highly targeted messages to match consumers’ individual preferences, which results in a more personalized experience.
3. A seamless multi-channel experience
Technology has empowered consumers to get what they want, when they want it, and how they want it. More than half of all consumers now count on a customer service response within one hour.
Everything is now occurring in real time, which is why those organizations that can offer personalization, immediacy and accessibility to their customers will win out in the long-run. Tying all of these interactions together allows your organization to create a single digital profile every time a consumer interacts with the business.
Conclusion
Digital transformation provides organizations with an opportunity to deliver and engage modern buyers on their expectations of a seamless consumer experience despite channel or place. According to research from IDC, two-thirds of the CEO’s will shift their focus from traditional, offline strategies to more modern digital strategies to improve the consumer experience before the end of 2019– with 34% of organizations believing they’ll fully adopt digital transformation within 12 months or less.
In addition, personalized experiences are what consumers have come to count on. Consumers want seamless experiences regardless of channel. Consider how your organization ties all the digital channels together in order to provide a single, user-friendly consumer experience.
By focusing on these three factors, your organization can embrace the new digital landscape, exceed consumer expectations and improve the overall consumer experience.
The Litcom Approach
Contact us to see how Litcom can help your organization with the implementation of a Digital Transformation project.