How to Develop a Digital Transformation Strategy
The world we live in today has become a digital village. Through the internet you can know anything happening in the world in seconds. The world of business has not been immune to the changes, as businesses that quickly adapted to digital technology in their manufacturing, marketing, and sales process have grown and thrived. In contrast, those who are unable or reluctant to adapt to digital processes have stagnated, fallen behind, or just died.
However, as a business owner today, it is not just enough to use digital products for your business. There must be a plan with several steps on how to use digital tools to move your business from the stage it currently is, to where you want it to be. That plan is contained in your digital transformation strategy. In other words, your digital transformation strategy, also known as your DX, is your plan to use digital solutions to develop the physical aspects of your business like the product, manufacturing, marketing, and sales.
Marketing using emails, SEO, and social media are examples of digital solutions in marketing, while NFTs and Cryptocurrencies are examples of digital products.
Why Your Business Needs A Digital Transformation Strategy
1. Efficient Allocation of manufacturing resources
With a digital transformation strategy, you get a precise feel for your market and an almost exact understanding of what your customers want. This helps you to understand your product better. You know better what to produce, when to produce, why you should produce it, where to produce, who to produce for and how you should produce. This means you get maximum returns on your investment.
2. Better Allocation Of Sales And Marketing Resources
With a digital transformation strategy, your marketing is transformed from shooting in the dark and hoping to hit something (which saps your energy and wastes your resources) to know the 4 Ws and H of your marketing. This means you get more for less for your marketing resources, making your business more productive.
How To Develop A Digital Transformation Strategy For Your Business
1. Know the 4Ws and H of Your Business
As a business, you need to know what you do (the product or services you offer), Who you do it for (your target market), why you do it (to make money? For charity? To help or make your target market develop certain beliefs or skills?) when you do it (regularly or seasonal), where you do it (physical, virtual or both?), and how you do it (the processes involved).
When you know these five things, you can better understand how to use digital solutions for your business. For example, if your “who” is young people who use their mobile phones and are on social media a lot, then your strategy to market to them will be through social media marketing. Similarly, if your target market is on the internet a lot, you can make digital art e.g., NFTs for them instead of analog art, etc.
2. Seek out partners and Expertise
Knowledge of digital solutions is one thing, implementing them is another different thing. This is why you must seek out people who understand digital transformation and create strategic partnerships with them. The experts will, for example, be able to tell you if the solution you intend to use is short-term, long term or doomed to failure.
Experts will also help you understand your 4 Ws and H better, which helps your business better overall. So in your quest to develop a DX for your business, ensure that you are part of partnerships and communities, look for resources and be on top of your market. The digital space is fluid because of constant innovations, so you must ensure that you are not left behind.
3. Gather Feedback and Refine as Necessary
One good thing that the internet has created which has helped business grow tremendously is the culture of instant feedback. Customers can instantly tell the business what they like and what they do not like through the internet. You might think you know the what and why of your product, but the customer might use your product for something you didn’t think of.
Your customer feedback will tell you if you are selling the wrong product or too few/too many products. Thus your DX must rely heavily on your customer feedback because they are the ultimate end point of whatever you are manufacturing, marketing or selling.
4. Embrace Diversity of Thought
The first thing you need to change when you are creating a digital transformation strategy is your mindset. If you still want to do things the old way, you will end up with a bunch of fancy gadgets, nice looking websites, and expensive digital tools, but your business won’t grow. You must know that it is not the only your business that the internet has changed; your customers have changed too.
Their lifestyles, their habits, their income. For example, when the popular social media service Tiktok started, many companies dismissed it as “an app where lazy kids goof around and waste time on” and refused to include it in their marketing strategy. These days the population of adults who use it for work and older people who enjoy it for leisure has increased geometrically, and brands that failed to see the potential from the beginning are trying to catch up.
Diversity of thought includes employing both older people who have the experience of manufacturing the product you want and young people who are more familiar with digital technologies. It involves employing marginalized populations like women and minorities, who can bring in fresh perspectives to how you apply digital solutions.
Conclusion
The internet is a dog-eat-dog world. The businesses that apply the above steps are the top dogs, and those who fail to move with the flow get left behind. Your digital transformation strategy is what determines if your business survives or dies. So paying attention to every detail that goes into it matters.