5 Things To Know Before Digitally Transforming Your Business In 2021

5 Things To Know Before Digitally Transforming Your Business In 2021

Are you embarking on a digital transformation journey? How 2021 of you!

The business landscape is no more what it used to be a decade ago when you could open up a store with a location-centric approach.

You can now serve a much larger customer base by setting up a digital store. It’s about time you leverage the technology and ride the digital wave that has disrupted how business is conducted across the globe. Advertisement

To enable you to succeed in your digital transformation endeavors, I want to share 5 things that you should know so you can hit the ground running as you commence the digital transformation of your business.

Here are the 5 things you need to know before digitally transforming your business in 2021:

• Analyze and prioritize
• See what your budget looks like
• Step into the user’s shoes
• Take cognizance of your competitors’ digitalization approach
• Cultivate a culture of adaptability

1. Analyze and prioritize

 Have you heard of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)? They are a good place to start when analyzing where your business currently stands.

If you don’t know how to go about it, use the following pointers:

• Look at your KPIs to see which processes are working and which ones have room for improvement.
• How adaptable is your team with technological changes? (More on this in point 5)
• What will your business’ digital transformation offer to your customers?

When you answer these questions, you will have a set of things that you will need to prioritize as you launch your digital transformation journey. Prioritizing will help you develop a focused approach that will fast-track the achievement of your objectives.

2. See what your budget looks like

 Once you know what digital aspects of your business you need to prioritize, evaluate how much you can spend on these upgrades or modifications.

Walmart is spending a staggering $2 billion to hone its digital capabilities, while General Electric has allocated $1 billion for its digital transformation objectives. These amounts are far out of the reach of small businesses, but you can always work out strategies depending on how much you can spend.

To arrive at an appropriate amount, discuss the value proposition offered by the proposed transformations with key stakeholders. Brainstorming ways to get the best bang for your buck will help your organization settle on where to start, how to proceed, and at what pace.

3. Step into the user’s shoes

 What is the end-goal of your digital transformation efforts?

It’s polishing the customer’s (online) experience with your business.

To accomplish this goal, you need to take an all-inclusive view of your customer’s experience. Right from when they learn about your brand, to the point where they make their payment – you need to make it an experience they will want to keep coming back to.

Aim to provide your customers a consistent, reliable experience and empower them with user-friendliness, technological capabilities, and responsiveness. If you don’t provide these, someone else certainly will. And guess who the customer will go to the next time?

Let’s use an example here. Think of an eCommerce store that sells imitation jewelry. When you open the website, it takes about 20 seconds to load. When it finally loads, most items are tagged “out of stock.” What impression do you think is the website giving here?

If you belong to a different industry, you may have to look at a different set of problems that your customers are facing. The bottom line – your customers must be delivered a seamless experience that allows them to make the purchase within a matter of minutes.

4. Take cognizance of your competitors’ digitalization approach

 Scan for how your competitors are approaching their digital transformation. Just like you, your rivals are also ramping up their digital infrastructure to make the best of both worlds.

You might find something unique that they have going on, which will be a good addition to your digital transformation strategy. If you know a business that is already acing the digital transformation game, see what they are doing differently and draw inspiration from them.

This is important because of 2 reasons:

• You don’t want to lag behind your competitors because that means losing valuable customers (and consequently, revenue) to them, and
• Since you can learn from their mistakes, and things that worked for them – you can go in with your eyes wide open and information that will provide you the ammunition to tackle challenges that come your way.

When you identify a set of things where your competition is ahead of you, it’s time to throttle your efforts into thinking about how you can match, or even surpass them.

5. Cultivate a culture of adaptability

 Once you have your digital transformation strategy ready to be implemented – who is going to implement it?

Hint: It’s not you.

You have a full plate. You would be better off monitoring the implementation of your digital transformation strategy, rather than implementing it yourself.

It is your workforce that is responsible for implementation. Not so surprisingly, 71 percent of business owners say that effective implementation of their digital transformation strategy was very or extremely dependent on how much their workforce supported it.

You can break your back coming up with top-notch strategies, but they will not amount to much unless you motivate your workforce to adapt to these changes.

Essentially, you must cultivate a culture that thrives on innovative upgrades. While you may need to take the lead, it is important that your entire workforce follows suit.

Final thoughts

 Digital transformation’s scope extends beyond the technological upgrades. You need to pay due attention to other variables, too. Always look out for what your competitors are up to, and what your customers are looking for.

Remember that this is a continuous process. Once you have achieved your current digitalization goals, there will always be room for improvement and new things you can try and implement.

In the process, you will learn about what works best for your product, industry, service, or customers. As you keep learning your strengths and weaknesses, you will be able to digitally transform your business to much more effectively achieve your goals and objectives.