In the current digital world, digital transformation (DT) has made a significant impact on businesses. It does not only belong to big tech giants. Even small companies are making it a consistent part of their business plans. There is a need to look for evolution and advancement to bring more to your current business goals. You will need proper planning and knowledge on how to develop a digital transformation strategy to make your brand worth spending for your customers.
While every organization looks for digital transformation, the question is how to get there with proper planning. Quick development, innovation, and evolution are the key factors that decide the digital economy.
Therefore, companies need to go through digital transformation with a proper framework and new technology. Knowing the strategies is as important as investing in upgrading the current system.
Every step is important in digital transformation. If you want to make a substantial difference while being highly competitive in the industry, you must anticipate changes and promote innovation.
To make this happen with the right approach, companies need to plan this while being optimistic about their future. That’s where you will know what digital transformation strategy is and how to develop it for your business.
What is a Digital Transformation Strategy?
A digital transformation strategy is a thorough plan of action that presents suitable ways to reposition your business according to digital trends and the economy. As customer needs change with time, businesses must also change their operational strategies, such as promoting innovation and business models.
However, the definitions might differ according to the industries.
- In the technology industry, a digital transformation strategy uses technology to make tasks easier. However, the challenge with this particular concept is that many businesses have used technology to enhance the way they deliver products and services since commerce has evolved. But why is this considered transformational and strategic now?
- As for the creative industry, the DT strategy is explained through digital marketing and UX. However, the concept is that customers use technology for research, finding, and choosing products that match their requirements. While this is true, creating a site, an application, or even an e-commerce strategy is rarely transformational.
- From a management industry perspective, digital transformational planning is an opportunity to revamp the business with a new perspective. It deals with aligning the operational models with the latest business models. The services and products may become more digitally equipped with the right approach. It also reduces the cost of operations and increases profit.
All of these explanations are right in their ways.
What is the Digital Transformation Strategy Framework?
A digital transformation framework is defined as the blueprint that describes how an organization should move through a change in the current business conditions. However, the framework is particularly a tool utilized within an organization, guiding all levels through the whole transformational journey.
Importance of Digital Transformation Framework
All organizations are built up with a finely tuned group of functions that work together to give customers the best products and services. However, the right approach to building a digital transformation framework plays a crucial role during the intense changes over time.
The framework ensures all areas of the businesses are well understood, and nothing is left in the transformational process. It allows an organization to create benchmarks, quality metrics, and clear pathways to progress while identifying areas that need more attention.
Moreover, adaptability is the most critical thing in any digital transformation strategy framework. Even the leadership of an organization, including the CEO and board members, must understand that everything will have to change with time. Consequently, it all narrows down to an organization’s mindset regarding digital transformation. People must think outside the box and be resilient regarding the continuous change.
A digital transformation framework is just one tool of many that can assist with the change, but it must be adaptable to various situations in various organizations.
Organizational Benefits of Framework
All departments of an organization have a specific role to play. Therefore, the digital transformation strategy framework enables all parts of the organization to work together, providing a common initial point of action for all teams or groups. However, the advantages of digital transformation strategy are universal and specific to achieve particular business goals.
How to Develop a Digital Transformation Strategy?
You may face many challenges while developing a digital transformation strategy, especially if it’s your first time. Outlining business objectives and goals and taking digital initiative takes a lot. So, when developing the strategy, an organization must pay attention to the following steps.
1) Business Assessment
An effective and organized transformation strategy starts with a comprehensive and unbiased assessment, aiming to closely understand the current state of the business. This extensive assessment will help you evaluate your strategic business objectives, opportunities for potential growth, and other key performance indicators.
2) Learn About Your Competitors and Industry
The next step after the detailed assessment of your current business is to conduct thorough research on your competitors and industry, potentially understanding how they operate. Studying your top and direct competitors will give you an upper hand. However, some instructions will help you effectively understudy the competitors.
- What digital transformation strategy and technique do they follow?
- What solutions are they currently working on?
- What are the essential tools and technologies used in your industry?
Finding answers to these questions will help you devise an ideal digital transformation strategy for your business.
3) Devise A Perfect Execution Plan
Your plan for digital transformation needs a clear roadmap to ensure your goals are met perfectly. Therefore, devise a clear roadmap for the required initiative, business innovation, and resource requirements to end results. Embarking on the development phase needs you to identify all crucial processes beforehand. It is important to have everything according to plan and execute to the best of your abilities using the available resources.
4) Create an Optimal Budget Plan
Most digital transformation fails because of the low budget. If you seriously want to take your business to the highest level in the current digital economy, you need to create a workable budget to always be ready to fund unforeseen occurrences. You need a budget plan to stay aligned with your digital transformation process.
5) Make a Workable Plan
You always need a plan for each business area when you start the digital transformation. Technology is just one thing of many to invest in. So, what should you do then? Make a team of like-minded people with the right set of skills who can work together to achieve the overall goals you have set in the plan. Therefore, conducting a thorough assessment of your workforce and the required skills to implement your digital innovation perfectly is suggested.
Digital Transformation Strategy Practical Tips
While completing an organization’s digital transformation might be tricky, you must learn some practical tips to improve your work.
1) Use Project Management Tools
Take digital transformation as a top priority project. So, you will need to invest in project management tools to improve your productivity and employee cooperation. The tools that you can use are, Asana, Wrike, Trello, etc. Such tools will be crucial in positioning your employees while increasing their productivity.
2) Keep Track of the Time
You need to invest in tools to track the time for a successful digital transformation of your business. Such tools are useful in measuring the performance of each employee working on the transformation, tracking the progress of their tasks and given responsibilities. Moreover, it allows you to gauge the team’s overall performance.
3) Social Media Tools
You should not downplay the social media power in the current digitally equipped era. You need the social presence and reach to help your brand gain visibility and attract potential customers. Therefore, it is suggested to consider using automated digital tools while making the digital transformation strategy. Find tools that can help you design and post content regularly. With such tools, you can create content in advance and automate the posting schedule. You will save much time with it while focusing on core responsibilities.
4) Recruit Professionals Who Love Tech
The hiring process of a team for digital transformation is also an important part. Therefore, you should not just hire candidates based on their qualifications. Look at their knowledge about the current digital trends and how they can help the brand implement them. So, hire people who know about machine learning, data science, UX, AI, graphics, content creation, web design, and social media management. With experts as a part of your digital transformation core team, your business will thrive in the digital age.
5) Brainstorming for Effective Solutions
Brainstorming is an integral part of the requirements development process. Therefore, an organization should conduct brainstorming sessions while dealing with a particular problem or challenge. Getting different ideas and solutions from different team members will uplift work productivity. The focus should be on challenge, inspiration, and motivation to solve problems as a team.
It will help you find viable solutions, but you will know an effective person who will come up with the best idea. You can hand over key responsibilities to that person.
6) Use of Data Analytics
Using data analytics to improve your digital system is one of the most prominent considerations. For your business, cloud computing and data analytics can do a lot of tasks. They enable you to extract patterns and trends using big data. However, you will need proper planning to use them for your business success.
7) Gather Information
Put together as much information as possible to understand your target audience and potential customers. Social media platforms such as Facebook allow you to target the core metrics while marketing the products on the platform. Moreover, FB provides information about your visitors, such as gender, location, and age. Such information and data are useful, especially in social media marketing. You will also know where your site’s traffic is coming from. It helps narrow down the regions and age groups, allowing you to expand your business.
Digital Transformation Strategy Examples
You can find many digital transformation strategy examples that will make you think about your business seriously. Digital transformation has helped many organizations and brands reach the ultimate heights of success. It is more than just updating the strategies and tools. Such business transformation requires a certain level of hard work, sheer commitment, and a love of creativity. Using your brain strategically will increase your sales, revenue, and productivity.
Following are some incredible digital transformation examples of companies with explanations of how they benefited from it.
a) Microsoft’s Digital Transformation
Who doesn’t know Microsoft? The company decided to bring digital transformation when it experienced a drastic drop in the stock price because of competitors like Apple and Amazon.
The company made a breakthrough when it adopted networking and cloud computing. They shifted their focus from traditional software to more advanced cloud computing systems that were suitable for commercial and personal use.
However, the company worked with different other software companies to develop a reliable system. After successfully implementing the digital transformation strategy, Microsoft made a significant success.
b) BestBuy’s Digital Transformation
BestBuy was facing low sales before they brought an innovative digital transformation that helped the company become a technology giant today. It took them seven years to make this possible. Going completely digital helped them achieve all their business goals and sales. They worked on the digital transformation that helped them become a company that sells technology. Moreover, the company used a digital technology strategy to speed up the delivery.
c) Target’s Digital Transformation Strategy
It is another popular company that improved its digital presence, made more customers, and increased its sales through effective digital transformation strategies. The company introduced new digital tools and technologies in its stores and online ordering, improving its social media presence and sales to boost its market share.
The store they remodeled was focused on direct-to-customer (D2C), which enabled customers to explore new products and place orders easily using their social media handles. Moreover, they worked and introduced an online ordering strategy; because of its user-friendly nature and quick delivery time, it makes the operations more effective and efficient.
The Target journey started in 2006, and since then, they have witnessed a substantial rise in revenue, sales and stock price.
d) Retail Digital Transformation of Home Depot
It is another example of a digital transformation strategy. Home Depot was a successful company in 2017 as it adopted an expensive digital transformation strategy. They aim to improve the online shopping experience for customers to provide them with the best quality products with a smooth ordering process.
The company has invested heavily in digital transformation strategies to improve online and in-store shopping in the past few years. The results are remarkable.
What Happens If Your Business Doesn’t Have It?
Nothing happens if your business doesn’t have it. Most businesses are still running successfully, generating massive revenue without digital transformation. So, it is merely a misunderstanding that businesses need digital transformation to succeed.
Some organizations are interested and seek to change their operational ways. However, we have seen medium, and large-sized businesses do not find adaptation easy. It’s no one’s fault.
It is important to understand that having a digital transformation strategy never means it is a good one. While this may sound obvious, how many leaders ask their peers to check the work? How many are able to create a new vision for the business goals and say, ‘I don’t think my work was good enough? It certainly is the crucial tests that don’t get marked. In fact, each aspect of the business is monitored, measured, and graded in terms of performance.
- Having digital transformation strategies doesn’t guarantee your business to thrive.
- Not having digital transformation does not mean your business will fail.
- Whereas having a bad digital transformation strategy gives poor results.
In many circumstances, short-sighted shareholders and political people block digital transformation. So, you should know that management is not always responsible for the failure; it could be shareholders.
Let Xeratek Helps You with Your Digital Transformation Strategy
Xeratek knows how to make a digital transformation strategy considering the business goals and requirements. We use the latest approaches to transform the way companies operate successfully. Our dedicated professional team closely follows the strategies and executes all plans in the best way possible. Get in touch with us and start the digital transformation of your business.
FAQs:
What is a digital transformation strategy?
A digital transformation or DT strategy is a thorough plan of action that presents suitable ways to transform your business.
How to create a digital transformation strategy?
To create a digital transformation strategy, you need to go through different phases, starting from assessment, competitor analysis, execution plan, budget plan, and an expert team.
What happens if you don’t have a digital transformation strategy?
Nothing happens; not having a digital transformation strategy does not make much difference.
What are the examples of digital transformation strategies?
All big and popular companies such as Nike, Microsoft, BestBuy, Amazon, and all other tech giants are sheer examples of digital transformation.
