Digital Transformation - A New Path Forward
What is Digital Transformation?
This is something, we often hear from major companies and also hear from many IT and consulting organizations, which specialises in the area of digital transformation.
We often get confused by what does the phrase means to us? What they do, as part of digital transformation? In what way it is different from the Information technology industry?
These are the questions that, come up to our mind as part of Digital transformation or going digital. Now let us demystify some of these terminologies.
Why do companies do it?
To reduce the Transaction, handling costs & to increase profits
To reduce the cost of manufacturing or cost of providing services
To improve the customer experience (Cx) & customer satisfaction
To get timely and accurate information to the management for decision making
To retain undisturbed leadership so that, a company's premier position is not disturbed by their competitors in the near future
To bring-in new concepts to the industry by which sizeable sales, market foot print & profits can be achieved
Relevant articles for your further reading below;
What are the tools available?
Many of us may have some misconceptions in this area. We may think that, there are special tools available for digital transformation. But none. That is the truth. However, the evolving information technology industry brings-in many new technologies day by day,
The Tech tools are dependent upon the individual business requirements.
Robotics can be used to automate transactional processes
Natural language processing can be used to interpret humans
Machine learning can be used to derive data from data available online
Chatboxes can be developed to reduce customer interactions over phones and e-mails
Digital platforms can be developed to reduce the need for customer coming to Bank's branches.
What are the examples of Digital Transformation Projects?
Digital manufacturing: The factory floor of BMW is fully automated through digital manufacturing and thru Industrial automations.
Disruptive: When Amazon's Jeff Bezos set up an online book store, it brought the distruptive technology to retail industry & to the world
Machine Learning: When an ecommerce company gets the competitor pricing information from online and uses them for their pricing strategy.
Cargo tracking: When an airline company or a cargo & courier company develop a digital solution for online tracking of cargo
CX project: When ICICI bank set up the first internet banking in the year 1998 in India, it is the digital transformation for Transactional banking and for the improvement of customer experience.
Takeaways:
Digital Transformation - A phrase is not a standard template to IT solutions but a standard template to bring in a disruptive change solution - Customer experience, reduction of Transactional costs for companies and their customers and to bring in new customers.
Digital transformation helps organizations to tie over extraordinary situations and enable them to operate seamlessly. They don't need to shut a manufacturing or services centre, but still can operate with minimum or No disruptions.
When the approach is clear, then the only decision for an Organization will be, the novel concepts or design and the finance budget available at it's disposal.