Digital Transformation - What, How and Why

There was a separation between Work life and Personal life before the COVID19 Pandemic. But the past several months are seeing it narrowing and it will continue to be so. The daily online meeting time has increased, the way of interacting has changed - with both colleagues and clients. The demand for virtual presence has increased enormously.

Schools are adopting virtual classrooms.

Working remotely has become the new normal

Conference rooms are being replaced with virtual rooms.

Giving these scenarios a bird’s eye view, you can see that your distance to the digital future has shortened.

The impact of this pandemic over your business is actually variable and depends on your perspective. While many entrepreneurs are holding their business, few are focusing on how they can keep their business run past this pandemic. The second perspective points out this solution of Digital Transformation. This can be the perfect time for adapting to some changes. Of course change is hard but it is the demand of the situation to embrace it.

It can be any initiative taken by your organization to use digital technology to improve business processes and activities to meet the needs of your consumers. Even digitizing your hard copies into files within your PC can also be considered a first step to evolve.

By this time, every organization including your’s must be at some level of Digital Transformation. You might have initialized your efforts to evolve digitally because of your desire to be more efficient and to make smarter and more informed decisions. There are no predefined steps involved. The process varies from industry to industry maybe even organization to organization, in some cases.

To fuel your Digital Transformation, modernize the management of data and information throughout its lifecycle. Note that once you start to Manage, Organize and centrally govern your data more efficiently, the greater is your ability to adapt a transformation.

Anyhow, you must go through these Levels of Digital Maturity eventually:

A. Level 1 - Change your relationship with the paper

Converting your paper records into soft copies saves time to search, physical storage and locations and it freezes up your data to lock within your reach.

B. Level 2 - Automate workflows and driving efficiencies

Figuring out the back-office works that lag your employees and eliminating or automating those processes which make them faster, leaner and agile, thus improving productivity.

C. Level 3 - Manage IT complexity

Create a Data life cycle management strategy which might give you some insights to optimize and store the data in a more efficient and secure way.

D. Level 4 - Use data insights & AI

By the last level, you had your data ready to go - work on the data more to discover much efficient and cost-saving methods.

Data is everything in today’s world. Start Modernizing yourself from your current level, but try to cover all these levels of Maturity.

Let’s see why a transformation is important.

Imagine that you need a bank account and have 2 choices. Bank A with traditional olden-days procedures and the other, a digitally evolved one.

You go to Bank A - collect an account opening form. Paste your photos, attach copies of documents which verifies you are who you are claiming to be and at last, waiting for your approval. The same process has to be repeated if the application is rejected. Okay, somehow you managed to open an account with this bank. You are not expecting just a savings account from a bank, are you? As time passes, you might need a credit card/loan etc. The same above-mentioned process repeats.

Now with Bank B, to open an account, all you need is a smartphone, which can run the Bank’s application which makes the whole process so simple and well managed. With all the soft copies of valid documents, your account is ready in no time. Same is the case with applying for a new credit card/Loan. The application part is over with some button clicks and the approval? It takes no more than a few hours - If your supporting documents are approved - and even you can track it online.

As a customer, you expect better engagement, proper updates etc. When you request a call-back or a loan for an emergency and what if the process of applying for a loan is making your situation worse? With your hectic life, you won’t stand with a bank which is not responsive enough to make things easier for their customers.

This applies to your customers as well. You should be caring enough for your customers that their needs are met - not once but on a regular basis. This graph plotted below shows clearly that digitizing your customer journeys yields better results, using the banks A and B.

Commercial Bank Loan

Time to get approval

Account opening

Time taken to open an account

Customer engagement

Touchpoints per year

IT

Time to release new updates

Source: Interactive Advertising Bureau, Pew research centre, Searchmetrics

Digital transformation should improve every aspect of your organization. Just digitizing your hard copies makes some of your work easier but what does that bring to your customers? The digital transformation is a never-ending process. A closed-loop, with the customer feedback completing the circle.

Take your time to look into your organization and see on which level of digital maturity you are. As mentioned earlier, Change is hard we know. That is why we are here - not only to get you on-board but also to travel with you so that you feel no difficulties in putting up with those changes.