It is evident that technology is rising as the biggest player in today's fast-changing world and serves as a value creation tool for many companies. By integrating technology into their business cycle, companies are leveraging on value-adding tools to try gaining a competitive edge over their competitors.
On the flip side, companies that have yet to ride on this much-needed transformation are facing increasing challenges or slowly liquidating.
Digital transformation may be the answer to the challenges your company is facing today and it begs the question: How?
Embarking on a digital transformation journey is indeed a long and tedious road with much work required to be done. To many, this journey is usually a huge leap away from their old ways of operation.
While the benefits of going digital are widely known to many, ensuring that the attempt does not become a wasted effort is tricky. The hidden truth: Majority of the effort ends up as a fool’s errand.
According to a poll done by McKinsey in September 2018, less than 3 percent of business executive reported complete success at sustaining better change after going digital. The number of reasons behind digital transformation failures are almost inexhaustible but one of the biggest challenges companies are facing is the lack of internal expertise to take on the initiative.
A humongous dollar value of $1.2 trillion has been given to digital transformation in 2017. Digital transformation is highly valuable but equally costly.
The purchase of a software is an obvious cost to incur but the time and resources (e.g. manpower, integration) spent to plan, develop and execute is a cost many fail to take into account. It is easy to miscalculate the inputs and outputs, which may eventually, in worst case scenarios, run into the possibility of generating a loss.
Many companies view digital as the sure lifeline of their business but, with all the “shiny toys” in the form of technology these days, how can you decide which are the suitable ones that can really help your organization?
Going digital is an extremely labor and time intensive journey and so it is important to understand how going digital will improve your business, create a bigger impact and value add your company. It is critical to know which technology is suitable for your company and what is not.
By having an experienced partner helps you better understand the software needed for your company for different processes and are the potential returns you can expect based on their prior experience with other clients.
From there, you can gauge if acquiring a specific technology, at the current stage of your business, is worth the while before making a decision.
A digital solution only works with a sound strategy in place. For example, if your end goal is to make your customers continue coming back to you after their first purchase, a strategy on what technology can help at various touch points of your customers is essential.
An experienced partner will be able to help point out things that you may have missed out or share what some of their other clients have done so that you can have an insight of the best practices in the market to prevent falling into any potential pitfalls during this journey.
By sharing their experience with other similar size clients, an experienced partner can also indirectly help you better understand the market and come out with a sound strategy together, fully maximizing the value of your digital transformation journey.
A good software is usually not just something you can copy and paste into your business operation. No two companies operate the same and the same can be said for the solution too.
Experience eliminates costs by filtering out the irrelevant technologies that are of no use to your company, making the journey a more efficient and valuable one.
A company needs a solution that complements their works, not substitutes them. It is crucial for you to understand the needs of your business and where technology could be implemented; to speed up the operations, increase the outputs, etc. You can have the best and most advanced software available in the market but, if it does not align with your company’s needs, it is mostly of no use.
Having an experienced partner allows for customization and provides the exclusive presentation of a software that will be the perfect fit for any stage of your digital transformation journey.
Taking Salesforce as an example. As much as it is a powerful customer relationship management system with tons of function available to the user, if the system is not customized to fit the existing processes of the business, it will be nothing more than an expensive beautiful “centerpiece” which will be neglected by its intended users in due time.
Looking for a suitable CRM system or an experienced partner for system integration? Connect with us today to find out how you can re-imagine digital transformation and maximise outcomes for your company.
