The ongoing pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns, office closings, and other changes in the business sector have all pushed companies to embrace digital transformation more than ever. This process entails everything from reshaping internal processes, switching to automation tools and software solutions to enable collaboration, and building an infrastructure heavily reliant on all things digital. This has been going on for years, but as the Covid-19 crisis has made it impossible for many businesses to stay open, switching to remote work has made it pivotal for survival.
If you run a business that has yet to fully embrace digital transformation, this guide is meant to help you retain your customers, make your employees happy, and preserve your brand reputation during this process. The following steps are key for digital transformation, so include them in your strategy to ensure success.
Digital transformation depends on people
While many companies fear that more digitalization will lead to a disconnected workforce, the opposite is true. For any form of digital transformation to occur, you need educated, trained, and digitally savvy employees to implement these changes and ensure optimal business performance post-transformation.
That’s why ensuring that your employees are qualified is vital for the success of your business and the process of digital transformation itself. As a result, this transformation starts and ends with your employees. Make sure they are prepared for this change in your infrastructure and that they are trained to handle the necessary tools that will ensure successful digital transformation for your company.
Enable internal collaboration with digital events
In addition to remote collaboration with the help of PM tools (to which we’ll get shortly), there’s a growing need for digital events that will boost your employees’ morale and enable them to connect even while they work from home. You can focus on workshops to enable their personal growth and professional education and introduce digital get-togethers to inspire business-wide social interactions remotely.
To introduce events in your transformation strategy, you can use a versatile event management platform for your seminars, training, and virtual social events, too. Your HR teams can use these for remote training, while you can set up conferences that will showcase industry experts and kick-start relevant conversations among your employees to retain employee engagement.
Discover the perks of PM tools
With the increased need for remote collaboration comes a slew of challenges for your business. In order to empower remote collaboration among your teams, you should look for project management tools to keep your workload, goals, deadlines, and scheduling under a single roof. PM tools are now equipped with a range of features such as chat, email notifications, video conferencing, cloud storage, and time-tracking.
These features alone can help boost employee accountability during remote work, but also streamline their responsibilities to avoid confusion and missed deadlines. When your teams can perform everyday tasks without hindrances, you can rest assured the rest of your digital strategy will be able to flourish, too.
Automate various processes
It may have started as a buzzword for many companies, but it has become a pillar of business growth. Automation is not the be-all, end-all of your business growth, but it comes with a certain promise to reduce time-wasting on menial tasks for your staff and it ensures cost-reduction for a range of your internal processes. With AI-based tools and machine learning, so many processes can be simpler and easier for your teams with automation.
Take customer service with the help of chatbots, for example. These handy, AI-based tools built into your website can take over a hefty portion of customer queries and increase your customer satisfaction in the process. Freeing up more time and resources for other, core business tasks is a huge step forward in your digital transformation strategy.
Rethink and adjust on the go
Before you start simply stifling your teams with new PM tools and automation programs, go over your current strategy and business plan to see what kind of digital transformation goals you need to establish. These goals can vary from one business to another, including everything from higher employee/customer retention rates, cutting operational costs, increasing cybersecurity, and enabling remote collaboration.
Clear and realistic goals will allow you to match them with the right digital tools as well as methodologies and procedures. In doing so, you’ll simplify the transformation for your staff and make it easier for them to adjust. Finally, as you implement new solutions, track the performance of your business and your ability to reach your goals. Your success rate will help you rethink your approach and introduce new improvements to make the process even more seamless for the long haul.
Even though you might have specific goals to ensure the optimal tempo for digital transformation, this is not a one-time program. Digital transformation assumes an evolving mindset open to change, one that’s ready to embrace new technology as it emerges and reevaluate certain operational procedures to adapt. While you do integrate these tools into your infrastructure and start educating your teams, make sure to build a culture of ongoing digital transformation to keep your business relevant.
