2. Accelerated Product Development

25% of business executives noted the great impact of digital transformation in accelerating product development, according to a report published by Economist Intelligence Unit in 2015. With large volumes of data being stored in the cloud, this can be a primary source of further improvements on products and services the organization is offering.

Such data is advantageous in analytics and decision-making processes. The more data the business has, the better placed it is to capitalize on it and create stepping stones towards product excellence.

Business Intelligence tools can process vast amounts of data and insights in an instant. They allow the whole business to act in response to changes in supply and demand in a shorter period of time compared to firms without the capability of gaining these insights immediately. Product reviews through online feedback and competitor analysis, along with accurate market segmentation provide a deeper understanding of the product. Thus, they encourage revisions to suit their customers’ best interests. 

In order for Artificial Intelligence as well as Business Intelligence to function efficiently, an operational digital business strategy is required. Implementing digital strategies speeds up product improvement, capturing a large market share, and eliciting a positive customer response.

Practical Tip:

Design “employee experience”

In order for your employees to get familiarised faster with AI and BI, start using tools such as “user research”, “why journey maps”, and “persona development”. Firstly, start with the employee experience research and creation of an employee persona. Gather background information, goals and motivations. Secondly, define steps to adopt to AI or BI, map them and the identify flaws.

3. Creating & Discovering New Sales Channels

The digital world is so vast that infinite possibilities are promised to both information providers and receivers with digital technology. It is definitely a very advantageous place to connect with people, places and things. It is certainly the best venue for building networks and discovering new ones. Taking advantage of the wide space and mobile connections is an opportunity not to be missed for any organization.

33% of global firms have intensively accelerated their progression in creating new sales channels, according to a report published by Economist Intelligence Unit in 2015. Thanks to digital technology, a common customer experience exists which has connected various enterprises around the world. Devices are not limited to personal computers, but also extended to affordable mobile phones. This means that most of the global population is now a prospect for business and sales.

The benefits of social media marketing can be incorporated in the company's digital platform. With hundreds of millions of users on Facebook alone, the social media channel for your trade has become established, improving the reach of your business.

Practical Tip:

Launch Facebook Store

Create your fully-integrated Facebook Store and start selling from within apps. Launch an ad campaign targeting your potential customers and support it with the new content. It will increase awareness and help you turn visitors into buyers.  Additionally, you will be able to offer discounts and promos, encourage social sharing and optimise layout of your store.

4. Better Management Decisions Through Artificial Intelligence

There are many useful functions that Artificial Intelligence brings to the corporate world. It can analyze data as well as providing quick, instant responses to customers, and even automate administrative tasks. Artificial Intelligence may threaten parts of the human workforce, but it makes the managerial and business processes easier and faster. It can provide larger amounts of accurate information that are necessary to improve decision-making for all levels of managers.

With most supervisors spending the majority of their time in control-based tasks and ensuring administrative coordination, Artificial Intelligence can greatly support them in this aspect by automating activities. More than 90% percent of managers would allow AI to monitor and report certain transactions and information for them, according to Accenture’s Intelligent Automation Report in 2016.

As long as large storage of data within the system is accessible at all times, decision- making can be more comprehensive and critically strategized. In fact, AI could support the management with simulations, data search, discovery and recovery tasks. It could also assist in assessing possible consequences of certain actions and strategies. A survey included in Accenture’s report shows that 78% of managers say they would trust the judgment of Artificial Intelligence. It shortens the amount of time spent by managers on control-based tasks and allows them to focus more on their judgment work. AI is also a trustworthy adviser that is available around the clock.

5. Easy Acquisition Of The Right Talent & Highly Skilled Workforce

Technology has not only provided a fast-paced workplace and efficient operating systems, but also supplied insights on potential employees through improved digital vision. For companies that have prospered within the digital world, 71% have attracted new workers and skills through digital innovation, according to MIT Sloan Management Review & Deloitte University Press in 2016. Job-matching sites such as LinkedIn and Monster allow the change and expansion of the individual's perspectives when looking for a job and when looking for employees.  Not only are customers drawn into the business, but so are talents that suit the company's needs for its workforce. Employment and hiring may have become unconventional because of this technological breakthrough, but they are also faster and better.

These digital talent platforms deliver transparency and efficiency within the labor market. Surveys reveal how working from home is increasingly possible with flexible hours. Technology creates opportunities for stay-at-home mothers and students to work for even just a few hours in a week. This allows firms to fully maximize the skills of the population and positively contribute to the economy.

The problem of job disparity is less likely to happen because of online analytical screening procedures, thus assuring the acquisition of desired skilful workers for the company. Another benefit of digital business strategy to be considered is how it helps its employees to match suitable jobs easily. Thus, it enhances their individual work productivity and increases satisfaction. According to a report by Altimeter Group in 2016, 37% of digitally innovated companies perceive increase in their employee morale as an indirect benefit to their company. 

6. Increased Market Share

According to the report of Altimeter Group in 2016, the biggest benefit of digital transformation, as perceived by more than 40% of executives, is the increased market share it can deliver to the business’ products and services in the long run. Advertising companies are investing more in mobile platforms as businesses continue to innovate on their customer relationships and eventually grow their brands.

From investing in digital transformation, advertising experts have observed a sustained return on investment because of the increased efficiency in delivering customer needs and ensuring satisfaction.  The market has become fast, convenient and simple which is what customers want. For example, certain markets such as communications, automotive and finance have strong shares in category searches over the web, as well as website traffic. This is possibly due to the increased use of digital devices around the globe.

According to independent studies on advertisements by Zenith, it was revealed how a number of elements correlate with brand growth. These include financial performance, media activity, digital activity, and owned and earned content performance, all of which of course require digital transformation. With dominance, or just a boost in market share as a goal, developing digital business strategies effectively contributes to the successful attainment of the goal.

 7. Better Customer Interaction Through Web & Mobile Channels

Simplicity and real-time services are what customers love about businesses undergoing digital transformation. The countless possibilities for improving customer relationships through the accessible channels of web and mobile are one of the many benefits cited by 32% of global executives after witnessing effects of digitalization, in a report published by Altimeter Group in 2016. This technological advancement has its main goal set on improving customer experience, which was made possible through shifting focus onto customer needs, analyzing data from all customer interactions, and using the results to make meaningful changes.

It was found that data-driven businesses and organizations are 21 times more likely to acquire customers, six times more likely to retain them, and 19 times more likely to be profitable, according to McKinsey Global Institute. Digitalization also makes assisting customers easier. Even before a customer makes a complaint about a product, they are prompted to do so independently and instantly in the system. Having a hands-on services workforce to respond to these concerns allow customers to make appointments which suit them best, thus enhancing customer satisfaction.

Artificial intelligence, automation, applications, machine learning and user interface let customers effortlessly receive what they demand. They also connect businesses and customers more easily. Undeniably, companies adapting to the digital environment are more likely to dominate the market as they offer personalization, immediacy and accessibility.

8. Higher Revenues For Your Business

With all the aforementioned benefits, chances are limitless for a business to profit more when investing in digitalization. Indeed, with efficient workers and systems, better decision-making and judgment, improved products and channels, and interactive relationships with customers, the entire business is transformed.

Ask an executive and they will likely agree that there is a direct correlation between effective digital business strategies and an increase in business revenues. This particular observation was ranked fifth in terms of benefits that executives deem evident after seeing the effect of this technological change. Customer bases can be readily found with digital means, and these bases can be converted into revenues.

There may be some industries that have fewer digital strengths compared to retail, for instance marketing and media businesses. However, it is likely that these industries will sooner or later be influenced by digital business and will witness greater and faster growth in revenues in the future.

2. Provide Better Customer Experience

Digital business strategies that are not properly planned may generate longwinded results. The digital space offers endless openings for customer interaction and product development, but in the absence of appropriate planning and implementation of well-defined and well thought out decisions, the benefits may not come through, or be minimal.

The ultimate goal of digital transformation is delivering a better customer experience by making real-time transactions easy to access, speedier to complete, and more affordable than traditional means. Instigating these technological plans may require employees’ greater understanding of how digitalization works, in which case training may be of help.

Taking advantage of automation and Artificial Intelligence and what they can do for the firm and its customers is something that an executive must never fail to realize. With AI and creative user interfaces freely offering automated and instant responses to customers, they may well be the most effective front liners when interacting with customers. They provide support, checking and simulating several options for clients.

Digitalization does not only stop with creating a website and an application. It needs deliberate planning and practical application. The customers expect a lot from businesses that have gone down the digitalization route.

Practical Tips:

Tip 1. Define what you want to output

Create a specific set of statements that will guide you to achieve an ideal customer experience. Focus on the benefits the customers can get from buying your products or subscribing to your services.

Tip 2. Define a unique twist

Assess whether your products or services are entirely new or are reinventions of products and services that already exist. If they are entirely new, state the reasons why you would be successful in satisfying customers. If they are reinventions, state the reasons why you address customers’ needs. Additionally, state the differences between your offerings and those of your competitors.

Tip 3.  Apply some high-level quantification

Write down the customer experience vision for your business with some high-level quantification. It shouldn’t be too broad, or so grand that it can’t be achieved. Equally, it shouldn’t be so narrow that it cannot easily be achieved without exerting effort.

Tip 4. Add human, “real world” aspects

Add a real-life aspect into your vision that everyone can relate to. In this manner, it becomes more memorable for you, for your employees, and for the customers and clients as well. 

3. Use Artificial Intelligence to Learn More about Customers’ Needs

Because of its multiple uses and advantages, Artificial Intelligence is a definite must-have. AI can interact with a customer online, accumulate accounts, and analyze data from records in history. It often provides advice or suggests ideas on how to make efficient decisions. Many managers at all levels rely and trust the system’s judgment.

The primary function of Artificial Intelligence is data analytics. It means that information does not just stay stagnant in the cloud; AI makes sense of it and uses the information in the development of products. It can even be more helpful in ensuring the accuracy of market segmentation and knowledge of what the customers really do or, indeed, do not want. This is essential when creating strongly-founded customer bases. The better the business serves its customers, the better the products, the more satisfied the customers are and the more beneficial the outcomes.

Artificial Intelligence can do a lot more than just digitalizing formerly human tasks. With this technology within your reach, it is possible to utilize it to gain knowledge about the population and market it is serving, and make use of this information to deliver excellence above expectation.

4. Seek Advice

Having effective digital strategies for industries such as marketing, media and retail has been proven to generate seamless results effortlessly. Communications, automotive and finance industries also continue to advance with more traffic within websites and share amounts in category searches. On the other hand, some industries score low in their digital strength such as real estate and utilities.  This means that they are likely to be impacted but perhaps not as immediately. As long as digital business strategies are properly decided and actually practised, the trends of bigger user base and better channels are intact. Some industries simply have a stronger consumer discretionary base than others.

It is necessary to understand that digital transformation performs differently from one industry to another. In rare cases where the company questions which business strategies to use, and how to implement them strategically, it is better to heed recommendations from related industries. Digitalizing indeed ascertains ROI and other benefits for all commerce. Approaches to customers may differ, thereby needing professional help from experienced individuals to design a perfectly suitable digital business strategy. As part of their digital strategy, many organizations are now online and on mobiles, so it would not be a strenuous task to observe or even ask for more ways and better techniques to impact their industry through digital transformation. 

5. Use Big Data and Analytics to Find Business Opportunities

Digital transformation has guaranteed us big data and analytics and these certainly have a positive impact on the entire business. With the cloud’s capability to store staggeringly large amounts of data, and AI as well as other features are able to analyze these inputs, companies can deliver significantly improved services and provide better products and customer experience than ever before.  

Machines may have been considered a threat to the workforce, but human intelligence is still very much needed within the corporate world. Huge data storing and analytics are where digitalization could help. However, decision-making and judgment as well as advertising ideas are stimulated and created within the human brain. There is also the responsibility to look for the company’s business opportunities. Data and analytics are useless if marketing executives do not take advantage of them properly.

The vast amount of data, information and analytics can achieve so much; from segmenting markets to assessing consumers’ needs, as well as assisting top-level managers in making large-impact decisions.

Practical Tips:

Tip 1. Utilize RapidMiner software

Utilize RapidMiner software as a powerful data analytics tool. It will give you a cohesive environment for text mining, data preparation and analysis, predictive analytics, machine learning as well as deep learning.

Tip 2. Utilize SAS software

Utilize SAS software to make better business decisions. It can also simulate all possible outcomes of a particular decision. With this data analytics tool, you can easily perform customer profiling and predict customers’ spending habits and behaviours.