The phrase “digital transformation” has been a business buzzword for some time, and you’d be forgiven for not being sure how to define it – there are a multitude of different interpretations of what it means in real terms for individual companies.
The truth is that digital transformation has the potential to impact almost every aspect of how your customers perceive your business, and the service you’re able to deliver to them. By taking a strategic approach to the role digital and technology plays in your business, and understanding the impact it has on your overall business goals, digital transformation can help you strengthen your business’s foundations and drive growth from the ground up.
Why fix what isn’t broken?
When your internal systems do the jobs they need to and your business is mostly operating smoothly, it can be easy to take an “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” approach to digital, focusing instead on more immediate issues like recruitment, new service areas, or client retention.
The fact is that digital is an integral part of all of these areas – and, done right, digital transformation starts with exactly these objectives in mind.
Through a digital transformation strategy you can do far more than just upgrade your technology – you can drive tangible improvements to the way your clients and staff perceive your business:
Create a smoother, more personal client experience
How much time do your team members spend completing mindless tasks? Time-consuming processes such as entering the same data into multiple systems or pulling together reports manually can pull your team away from client interactions, making a sub-par client experience.
By automating administrative tasks, your teams can refocus their time on adding value to the business, delivering more billable hours and providing a more personalised service to your clients.
Drive better decision making across your business
Knowledge transfer between different teams can be a challenge when departments rely on different software applications and systems. Integration of your software applications can make it much more straightforward for your employees to gather the information they need to make data-driven decisions.
When every part of your technology infrastructure is interlinked and different parts can “speak to each other”, data entered into one system can be made available to everyone who needs it without the risk of cross-departmental errors or duplication of effort.
This means your teams get access to the information they need wherever they are, allowing them to make informed, data-driven decisions at critical point without waiting for input from other teams.
Adapt to the “New Normal”
When COVID-19 drove the need to work from home, many businesses had to scramble to facilitate remote working and keep operations running during lockdown. There are countless success stories of businesses who were able to get their teams up and running from their kitchen tables in record time.
As the world readjusts and evaluates, working from home has proven to be not only possible but, for many, preferable, and many businesses are adopting flexible working as a permanent option for their staff. However, because necessity dictated speed when setting up these remote working solutions, businesses are starting to discover that the systems they’ve put in place are not fit for long-term use.
A digital transformation approach can help your business ensure that the systems supporting remote and flexible working are secure, efficient and joined-up. As something that is becoming a permanent fixture in the workplace, remote working needs to simply work, with no workarounds and no compromises.
Attract high-performing new talent
The recruitment of high-quality new talent to grow your team is critical to your business growth. In an increasingly competitive landscape where top candidates have become increasingly selective, ensuring your business is a place where the brightest and best want to be is vital.
Younger people currently making their way into the jobs market have high expectations of technology– they live and breathe digital, and expect systems that “just work” as standard. Clunky or out of date technology is likely to frustrate younger team members much more than their older colleagues, which could affect your ability to engage and retain new hires.
If you want to bring in fresh talent with new ideas and insights, your business’s processes and systems need to be able to keep up with Millennial and Gen Z expectations. This means ensuring that systems are streamlined and easy to access, with no workarounds like clunky multiple logins or awkward, old-fashioned navigation.
Futureproof your business
When working to grow your business, it’s important to ensure that you’re not only up to date with current technologies and functionalities, but also able to adapt to the future. As the past two years have shown us, change can happen quickly, and the ability to flex to changing circumstances can mean the difference between surviving and thriving.
By investing in new systems and digitalising your operations, you can take advantage of the updates and new developments that solutions suppliers are constantly releasing to improve processes and continue to stay up to date with the latest innovations.
For example, many SaaS (software as a service) solutions now operate in the cloud, allowing software updates to be rolled out automatically. This means your business can stay up to date with new features, and take advantage of performance improvements and efficiencies as soon as they’re available.
Unlock new opportunities to grow your business
By monitoring the data your business collects as part of its operations, you can gain insights into how clients and partners use your services, where there are gaps in your offering, and gather vital information to inform your board-level decision making.
With digital transformation, you can harness the potential of data by utilising the information available within your business. Data management systems and solutions can help you to find patterns and trends within your data, and uncover clues to what your business should be focusing on and investing in.
Identifying the pieces of data which offer you the greatest insight into your business, then making them available quickly and easily to the right people, is an intensive process, but it can be a key competitive advantage that unlocks valuable new growth opportunities.
Elevate your business performance with digital transformation
Whatever your market sector, digital can impact on every area of your business, from customer experience to recruitment. A digital transformation strategy can help you identify the key areas of your business where potential improvements lie, and implement the technologies and processes required to drive ongoing business growth.
Looking to modernise your workplace?
At TSG, we help you to create secure and flexible solutions so that you can focus on better collaboration, strong communication and better productivity. Get in touch with our expert team to discuss your needs.
