Fear of digital transformation

Digitalization is the process of transforming a business through the introduction of online tools that help expand the market for a product or service, reach a new audience or even change the vector of the company’s movement.

But why are small and large businesses afraid to go digital if it’s empowerment? What are the problems behind this? NGN.agency struggled to deal with this.

Thus, the digitalization of business is the driving force behind its development. Its main advantages are:

• optimization and improvement of communications – both internal and external;
• cross-selling / upsell sales opportunities;
• customer service and encouraging them to purchase more products;
• competitive opportunities by improving the customer experience and overall optimization of the workflow;
• saving time and increasing productivity – automation of production and other internal processes of the company.

According to forecasts published 3 months before the start of the pandemic, global investment in digital technologies and services by 2023 should amount to $ 2.3 trillion. But the crisis has changed everything. COVID-19 is an event that divided the moderate and gradual process of digitalization of business into “before” and “after”. At present, companies are simply forced to switch to technologies they did not plan to implement for some time and reconsider their strategic priorities.

“Implement digital – or die” is the reality of the COVID-19 epidemic.

But small and large businesses have 4 main obstacles.

1. First, the owners do not understand what digital is, and they are afraid that they do not need this “new”.
2. The second is the fear that it is very expensive. This is an important point, because a business that does not calculate what budget it spends on employee services per month, believes that digital is expensive. But if you divide the cost of the digital solution by 12 months, and then for each employee, you will get a fairly small price, clear and normal for business, given that the result it can bring during the year is quite high.
3. Third – there was already a negative experience, or top management took over the negative experience of others.
4. The fourth is thinking like, “It’s all later, and now there are more important things.” This “then” came to quarantine, but even so many still put in a long box. Most likely, those who postponed for a long time have already gone bankrupt

What business needs digitalization?

The speed at which business must operate today is too high. And businesses that do not go online are left without customers. There is a clear algorithm for how businesses go completely digital:

First of all, you need to take the processes that take place within the business and prescribe them. This section will help you understand what tasks are performed within the business. Also list here the people who perform these processes and whether they perform what is required.

The second step is to translate everything into flowcharts. Outline the stages of the process – what is behind it. See how the client communicates with the company, and vice versa – how the company communicates with the client. Then you need to think about how to shorten and speed up this path. Competition in the market is who will “process” the client faster and better.

The third stage – put yourself in the lead of your (or maybe not your) market in terms of digital solutions. See what they do with you as a customer: how the application is processed, how messages are received, how the chatbot works with you and technical support, you can view the delivery.

This is the basic and easiest way to digitalize.

Does digitalisation always help increase profits?

It is important to understand that digital will speed up and streamline business, but it will not replace the fact that there is your product, there is your market size and there are people who help the system work.

Therefore, first of all, you need to refine the product so that in digital it was as effective and useful for the client as in offline. In the long run, digitalization increases the volume of everything that happens in business, helps to scale and, in fact, brings more profit.

Thus, no modern business will be able to survive in the long run without developing a digital transformation strategy. The digitalisation of services, as well as the digitalisation of the state and technology in general, has already saved millions of jobs, helped slow the spread of the virus and allows businesses to cope with the new reality.

If you are just planning to digitalize your business, you need to do it as soon as possible. The long-term future of each company depends on it.