Digital transformation must be embraced by every business for various reasons. These include to avoid falling behind competitors, to strengthen security and cut down on security breaches, and to remove the reliance on legacy software.
A digital future requires digital transformation now, but where do you start? Here’s an explanation of what digital transformation is and some tips for going digital, plus unlocking future success.
What is Digital Transformation?
Digital transformation is when an organisation implements a digital-driven approach to the business. Different businesses will have slightly different implementations of digital transformation; some aspects of a businesses may not be able to have a digital approach, but broadly speaking, digital transformation would be implemented across the business as widely as possible.
Focusing on fundamental change, the process is implemented to digitise previously non-digital products, goods, or services, and revolutionise how you interact and deal with customers. It goes further than simply investing in new technology, with cloud services among the sweeping changes.
The goal for the implementation of digital transformation is to increase efficiency, have a more streamlined and efficient operational process and unlock new value for employees, customers and shareholders.
How to Transform Your Business Digitally
Shift Your Company Culture
For digital transformation to be successful, the entire organisation must understand why it is happening, how it can benefit the overall company, and subsequently become invested in that change.
Change can be daunting for many, and attitudes must change in order for it to work.
Your workforce is going to be affected by the change, as you bring in more technology, and they need to understand how this is going to have a positive impact on their daily lives.
Bring the team together and gather feedback, and have a dedicated team focused on the implementation of change.
The company needs to know where changes need to take place, and although the process is company-wide, there will be areas requiring a total overall and others requiring small tweaks. Knowing what is needed where is a key part to achieving effective change.
Outline a Digital Strategy
Once your whole organisation is on board with the future change, you must outline how you are going to make it a reality within the business by creating a strategy. Whatever the reasoning for the change, a strategy will help it run smoothly.
Who is going to be in charge of it, what is the overall goal, what are you actually going to get out of digital transformation and what do you need to bring in, in order to make it happen?
These are all important points to consider as part of a strategy, and if you have answers to those questions, it will give the implementation a stronger chance of running smoothly.
Make Investments in Technology
Of course, digital transformation requires and relies on having the appropriate technology and systems in place across the business. Having a strong IT system in place allows you to focus on the success of your organisation.
Implementing infrastructure and technology that can grow with you is important to ensure you have the appropriate level of service – this helps avoid costly and disruptive migration further down the line. In addition, it ensures efficient and effective operations, and accommodates for your future growth. Cloud services are the key to innovation and enable employees and stakeholders to access information and data anytime, anywhere. This makes working from home more efficient, and in a way that your employees and wider business will benefit from the implementation.
Investing in the technology is one way that the process can save money – virtual storage allows for the consolidation of multiple servers and applications onto a single physical server. The benefits of this include the reduction in hardware costs, as well as power consumption and maintenance expenses. The use of virtual storage introduces a more scalable and flexible storage solution that can easily be adjusted to meet changing storage requirements, without the need for physical upgrades.
Conclusion
With all of that in mind, it is time to make digital transformation happen across your business. It’s a process that requires investment of finances as well additional time from stakeholders. Make sure everyone is on board with the process, plan it methodically and invest in the technology you need.
It may be scary and daunting, but change is good. Digital transformation of course has a cost, but it is a far smaller cost than can be caused by the decision not to implement it.
Industry experts Technology Services Group say of the process: “Digital transformation is a must for the modern business. With the right cloud strategy and solutions, we can help your business to securely do more, streamline processes, save money, and add value.”
Technology Services Group (TSG) are a nationwide provider of managed IT services, Microsoft business solutions and consultancy.