Amelia Grant

Today, corporate digitalization is a top priority for more than 85 percent of the world's biggest businesses. In fact, more than 65 percent are concerned that failure to digitize their business operations may result in a loss of competitive advantage, affecting their firm earnings. As a result, many firms are working hard to accelerate their digitization initiatives.

Learn more about business digitalization to make sure your business will succeed in the future. 

1. Consider industry specifics

Successful digital transformation requires the development of industry standards. Solutions, as a rule, contain an individual artificial intelligence model, a list of industry tasks, an innovation plan, asset digitization, and an updated business process scenario. So, for example, the model of digital transformation of the energy complex will not suit the manufacturing industry. Therefore, each area needs an individual approach.

2. Set digital protocols

Planning is essential to digitize your business. It is critical to analyze how digitization will influence your organization and its operations to avoid releasing a slew of unproductive programs and procedures that will elicit negative feedback from consumers and target audiences. As more businesses rush to digitize, the market is getting increasingly competitive. Your launch should highlight your strengths rather than your weaknesses.

Begin digitizing your company operations by considering how they are interconnected and interact with each other. For example, if you are a manager of a rental and commercial property accounting company you probably have to store a lot of documents. How will you produce, save, modify, transmit, and complete those documents? What programs will aid in the digitalization of your firm, and are they interoperable? Your team should strive to build a set of procedures that facilitate your digitization, therefore enhancing customer experience and employee efficiency.

3. Provide mobile support

Mobile assistance is a vital component of how to digitize your business. Today, more than 75% of Americans own smartphones, emphasizing the importance of a digitalization strategy that includes mobile assistance. If your workers, customers, or target audience are unable to access your external or internal digitizing features on their mobile devices, your company's profitability, growth, and productivity will suffer.

If you're working with a third-party service provider to digitize your business, be sure their solution supports mobile devices such as Android, BlackBerry, and iOS. It's also critical to ensure that their mobile applications have an easy-to-use interface that provides a consistent experience for all customers. In most cases, providers can offer you a free trial or live demo that gives you an understanding of how the program works.

4. Establish provider partnerships

The addition of third-party service providers to your team may give the impression that your company's expenses are increasing. But digitizing company operations, particularly those that are information-intensive, can result in large financial benefits. In reality, your organization may cut costs by up to 90% while also shortening response times like for loan approval decisions.

Consider the return on investment when you select a third-party service provider and establish your in-house team, which may need to expand to meet your business's digital ambitions. In certain cases, the extension of your in-house team may be temporary to meet an internal deadline or to offer critical assistance after the instant launch of your digital landscape.

5. Incorporate cloud-based technologies

Cloud-based technologies like a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) program and a Knowledge Management System, are frequently included in a corporate digitization plan (KMS). The goal of both these technologies is to provide a single site for the faster administration of certain information like leads, wikis, and more.

Depending on your company's services, you may want to investigate using other cloud-based technologies to supplement your client offers. If you work in the medical, financial, or insurance industries, for example, you may need a safe and compliant solution for sending or faxing digital documents to customers. When comparing providers, look at their Service Level Agreements (SLAs), as well as the quality and hours of customer assistance.

6. Review customer feedback

It is critical for all businesses to assess client feedback. As a result, it's critical that your team evaluates customer feedback at every stage of development, from alpha and beta to live. Their feedback will assist your team in determining where adjustments are needed, identifying potential issues, and identifying areas for improvement in the user experience.

Consider producing some technical resources and reference manuals for workers and customers to answer common queries, solve common troubleshooting difficulties, and send support requests to the proper contact before deploying your digital business operations. If you deal with a third-party service provider, such as for document delivery, they will most likely provide assistance as well, reducing your team's effort.

7. Target end-to-end experience

Because you want to provide an end-to-end customer experience, you should digitize your business operations using workers from a range of teams. As a result, you'll need to gather information and form a team to digitize your company operations. Create a productive team by choosing remarkable employees with good communication skills from your departments.

You may need to hire extra staff with certain skills depending on your present talent as well as your digitalization aspirations. User experience designers and data scientists are two viable jobs to add, since they may give vital assistance and insight throughout the design and management of your company's digitization activities, favorably impacting its success.

8. Invest in training

Digitization of operations assists firms in keeping up with trends in the ever-changing world of business. Training is critical for smooth transitions. Teams that are aware of and comfortable with their company's digital assets perform better in day-to-day operations, which contributes to organizational and individual success.

9. Make sure everyone understand their roles

Bring all of the teams together to ensure that everyone knows their responsibilities and roles in the transitions, what to expect at each step, and what success looks like. When troubles occur, the team can immediately repair the situation and avoid significant problems.

10. Document all changes

The process of transitioning to a more computerized model begins with thorough process documenting. This is the foundation of the collaboration required across all business entities concerned. Outlines, wireframes, and long-form descriptions of why and what success looks like should all be included in process documentation. When done correctly, it may be used in a variety of contexts ranging from implementation to knowledge centers.