Implementing a Digital Business Shift is Need of the Hour
Overcoming the greatest challenges of the pandemic and making 2021 a successful year lies in our ability to make the right decision at the right time.
Besides all the major setbacks we experienced in 2020, Covid19 has increased our reliance on technology. The famous proverb by Plato says, “Necessity is the mother of invention”, this pandemic forced the world to rethink our daily lives from work to school to entertainment. 2020 has pushed societies to an inflection point where embracing technology is no longer an option, but a necessity.
Embracing the unknown can be scary:
Companies that have invested in data and technology prior to the pandemic are now in a much better position, dominating the markets even more. Many businesses are understandably reluctant to loosen the purse strings in the current environment of uncertainty. While digital transformation is often viewed as a massive upfront investment measured by long-term results, well, it doesn’t need to be. Transformation can start with low-cost pilots by solving basic underlying challenges and can be scaled upon getting the desired results.
There are two types of organizations: those that are “doing digital” and “digital innovators”. The digital innovators such as Amazon, Alibaba and Uber are winning. They are continuously disrupting the status quo enabled by this new technology adoption. The biggest mistake is that many organizations are simply digitizing services (adding technology and digitizing marketing) and call it a digital transformation.
Well, it’s really not!
What is not Digital transformation?
Digital transformation does not refer to the creation of new websites, the addition of e-commerce stores, getting likes, retweets, social posts or even the use of technology.
The word “digital” means the pace of change that’s occurring in today’s world driven by the rapid adoption of technology. Because of rapid technology adoption, how our customers engage with us is changing the operating model of how we create new sustainable competitive advantages and how we must change if we are to keep pace.
What is Digital transformation?
Digital transformation is a journey of strategic, planned, organizational change. It starts by empowering our teams with new methods to create highly responsive data driven strategies and a fearless culture of innovation. Every Organization generates data, be it smaller or larger, internal or external, online or offline. The goal is to understand how to align all that growing data in real-time, across all sources and platforms – to know how to use it to inform and transform. With the right planning, platform integration and data strategy, that’s exactly what a digital transformation with data delivers.
Role of data and analytics in Digital transformation:
It is true that everyone needs data, it is not always true that everyone knows what their data is doing. Remember to focus on better data, not just “Big data”. A true digital transformation works with the data to analyze, implement and refine the right unified tools, design data strategy and develop a data management process to enable the accurate data insight. Better insight means better strategy. Transform your organization’s data strategy to base its decisions on data.
Now is the time to act:
The right leadership creates high-performing innovative organizations. Part of the journey is getting everyone on board by helping them realize that embracing change is a win for everyone. Leaders who are able to inspire and drive change within their organization will find success in digital transformation.
Companies who know more about what’s ahead, will win the race!
Remember: Digital transformation doesn't always guarantee business success, but it can improve operations with a willing workforce.
CompassRed is a full-service data agency that specializes in providing data strategy for clients across multiple industries.