Back in 2015, it was previously estimated by executives that by the year 2020, nearly 47% of revenue will be influenced by digital. Retrospectively, due to the effects of the coronavirus and the lockdown in 2020 we can quite comfortably say that this was an underestimation of the power of digital transformation. Therefore, it should not come as a surprise that more than 89% of organisations have planned to implement a digital-first business strategy in future. The question is, whether your organisation is one of them?
If so, then this article is a must-read for you. If not, then you have to rethink your business operations and take the time to understand what exactly is digital transformation and how it can help your digital marketing agency. Because if you do not, then your competitors definitely will. And it is a must to do for businesses nowadays looking at online shopping serge after COVID.
What is Digital Transformation?
Digital transformation is nothing but the integration of digital technologies and digital marketing into a wide range of business activities & processes to make it a lot more efficient and effective. The main idea behind digital business transformation is to change the way your business operates in order to deliver a lot more value to your customers and stakeholders.
Although digital transformation is not bound by any particular technologies, there are a few that are currently considered to be the driving force for businesses, namely – artificial intelligence & machine learning, cyber security, cloud computing, internet of things, big data, etc. These technologies have a wide range of applications across the business operations that range right from HR, marketing, operations, manufacturing, public relations, and especially customer experience.
How to drive Digital transformation strategy for the retail industry:
Retail digital transformation is perhaps the most promising industry when it comes to the implementation of a digital transformation strategy because of the need of improvement in the customer experience strategy as the organisation begins to scale. There is no way that your employees would be able to handle the entire retail business operations in a traditional manner with the expectations to scale to greater heights with consistent efficiency and productivity.
Here comes the need for technology such as AI and machine learning. In order to succeed in implementing such technologies, companies need excellent digital transformation consulting from experts in the industry who can help them in areas such as:
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Customer Centricity
In the context of retail digital transformation, business organisations need to focus more on creating a customer centric digital transformation customer experience. The relationship between the customer and the business must be one that is personalized, full of trust, and completely frictionless across a number of channels. This can be achieved using digital transformation solutions such as personalized digital marketing, data-driven sales, and by understanding and implementing the nuances of the customer journey using AI. This can help boost sales and push customers more to shop online.
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Operational Excellence
It is not just sales and marketing that will take advantage of big data, AI, machine learning and cloud computing. Machines are increasingly collaborative in the business process, helping the decision-makers and stakeholders of a company make better day-to-day business decisions. In the future, or rather even at present digital transformation services are essential in accelerating innovation and improving efficiency.
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Continuous Innovation
With the right digital transformation consulting, companies can combine data, technology, and talent from across your company to create innovative products, services, offerings and even business models at speed. This form of digital business transformation is essential for corporations to create a world-class innovation system and is not possible to achieve without digital transformation solutions.
What are the benefits of digital transformation?
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Improved Data Collection, Management, Insights, & Analytics
Businesses cannot function without data in the 21st century. Therefore, almost all of the well-known corporate entities collect mountains of data for a number of reasons. But data in and of itself is not worth anything, the true benefit of this data is optimising it to get analysis and insights that will drive the business forward. Digital transformation services help create a system that not only gathers the right data but it also incorporates it in the form of business intelligence at a much higher level.
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Excellent Customer Experience
Digital transformation and customer experience are things that go hand in hand. In today’s time, customers have a sky-high expectation when it comes to their experience with a business. Large corporations like amazon have spoiled their customers with endless choices, affordable prices, and instant deliveries. Which makes the customer experience to be the battleground when it comes to battling with your competitors. It is one of the key benefits of digital transformation and you can forget matching up to your customers expectations without keeping up with the latest digital transformation trends.
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Improved overall productivity
This comes as no surprise because when businesses have substantial, well organised data that gives them incredible insights, there is bound to be a lot better decision making in terms of efficiency and productivity. Nothing works better to improve the overall productivity of a corporate organisation better than digital transformation. According to a recent survey done by IDG, nearly 32% of the decision-makers in the IT sector have observed that digital transformation is impacting their productivity and in turn, their overall revenue by a substantial 23% increase.
Final Thoughts
Businesses have changed drastically over the past decade and it is doing so even more due to digital transformation. Previously, the focus was on the product and service itself. But now, thanks to digital transformation and the insights that it is providing us with, the focus has shifted more towards the customer experience, productivity, innovation, and scaling the business to reach greater heights in terms of the revenue that is generated. Customers who shop online for books have better online shopping experience than previously. This form of transformation is not just limited to any one level of an organisation, it works across the areas of operations.
There is an endless amount of possibilities when it comes to the application of digital transformation across various industries – especially in the context of innovation. Now is the best time to take your business goals to the next level by taking advantage of digital transformation in your organisation.
Author Bio:
Akash Dwivedi is a seasoned Digital Marketing Professional actively working in the field of Online Marketing for a long time. He is currently working in the capacity of SEO Head with Desertcart, a largest online shopping website in UAE. Akash has rich experience in designing & managing the entire Growth Marketing Plan and Strategy on online businesses.
