What is Digital Transformation
A quick google search and we will find many definitions about Digital Transformation, the one I found most descriptive was:
“The acceleration of business activities, processes, competencies, and models to fully leverage the changes and opportunities of digital technologies and their impact in a strategic and prioritized way.”
The key point I took from the definition was to leverage technology to grow your business. In business today, customers expect more from a business than in the past. A digital transformation is a holistic approach to tackling growth within your business through the power of technology. Below are the three main overarching areas to be addressed:
- Transforming Customer Experience
Customer Understanding, Top-Line Growth, Customer Touch Points
- Transforming Operational Processes
Process Digitisation, Worker Enablement, Performance Management
- Transforming Business Models
Digitally Modified Businesses, New Digital Businesses, Digital Globalisation
Why should I care about Digital Transformation
Every business has a core service or product, which is where most business owners would love to spend their time. However, most of us don’t get to spend our time doing that because we are bogged down with administrative tasks like capturing receipts, paying staff, dealing with disputes, and many many more issues.
As business owners, our time is often limited within a day which means we need to cram many roles into a couple of hours of a day. The core of our business is what keeps us motivated to continue doing what we love, but it often takes the most menial task to derail us. It’s one of the reasons why so many businesses fail because as founders we can lose sight very quickly of what is the core.
Menial tasks like responding to customer queries, responding to emails, submitting documentation to our accountants, or simply just trying to buy products from our suppliers can cost any business if it is not completed correctly. Most of the time however we ask ourselves is there not a better way to do this, there is.
Digital Transformation Case Study:
Business Type:
Hair and Beauty Salon
Core offering:
Beauty services and products
Problem:
A Hair and Beauty Salon relies on being able to provide a quality service to customers but also to be able to maximize the number of available hours worked a day. If the business is not situated in a high-traffic area like a shopping center it will need to become creative with attracting new customers to its establishment.
The issue is that it’s quite expensive to operate in a shopping center, which often means the business needs to push up its pricing to afford rent. This type of business is also going to need a minimum of two people, one to complete the treatment and one to deal with customer bookings. This is just one aspect of the business, but critical because if you struggle to acquire new customers you will not have a business, to begin with.
Solution:
The focus will be on customer acquisition, what I mean here is how do I as easily as possible get a customer from being aware of who I am to showing up and paying for a booking.
A solution would be to acquire a digital booking system, one that is able to provide new customers with enough information about your services and be able to make a booking at any time of the day. Not only does this ensure that customers understand your offering, but it can also be done in the comfort of their own homes.
Business Outcomes:
- Top-Line Growth, Process Digitisation, Customer Understanding
Pros:
- Cut down time and cost spent on acquiring new customers
- Complete automation from booking to payment
- Businesses focus more on the service element
- Remove pain points from the booking process
- More work shifted to the customer side than on the business
Cons:
- We don’t live in a perfect world, with all digital products there are adoption issues. Most customers are not familiar with booking a beauty appointment from an app, which makes them revert to old habits like trying to call to book.
- If the leaders don’t buy in, staff will not ensure that this becomes the standard of the business.
Where do I start
A good starting point is usually to break down what the core of your company is and what it takes to perform that work.
Most businesses have four core areas namely Marketing, Sales, Finance, and Operations. They all work together to be able to achieve the business goals, however, each one’s priority is relative to the type of business. A starting point would be to list all the activities per core area this also includes the activities you do not do you yet but would need to eventually perform, like:
Marketing:
- Creating digital content for social media platforms
- Placing ads in various mediums
- Developing your brand
- Research new concepts
Sales:
- Attending networking events, conferences, and workshops to meet people
- Cold calling
- Cold emailing
- Building relationships
- Up-selling to existing customers
- Acquiring new customers
Finance:
- Managing budget
- Developing business model
- Remaining compliant
Operations:
- Perform tasks to deliver service to the customer
- Managing staff
- Managing workspace
Once you have defined your core activities and defined the various tasks, label each task with the following information:
- Priority:
- Time spent per month:
- Can it do with improvement:
In most businesses, you will go through this process a few times because we all think everything is important which is not the case. Once you have a good idea of each task, you can now use this information to decide on which tasks can really leverage technology to be improved. From there you can perform a quick google search to try and understand what is out there in the market to help you address the problem.
Final Notes
I hope this article provides some information that can be used to assist in growing your business. For those that would like more assistance, you can contact our company Skywalk Innovations. Checkout one of our previous articles around the importance of digitizing your business.
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