Digitizing your business today does not mean the same
thing it meant ten years ago. It definitely doesn’t mean what it meant at the
turn of the millennium. While digitizing operations back in the early 2000s
literally meant computerizing paper records, today, it will have more to do
with transferring information to the cloud.
Digitally transforming your business essentially means
taking advantage of rapidly evolving technologies to streamline business
operations and offer customers value. Visionary businesses owners will realize that going digital is not a nice-to-have option but a necessity. Disruptive Innovations is a digital business and technology consulting firm that specializes in assisting enterprises with IT strategy and transformational solution implementation.
If you don’t have an e-commerce website, your customers
will move to a rival who allows them to buy online. If customers can’t comfortably navigate your website from their smartphones, you may have a risk of losing them to some other website. In that case, Conception de site web with creative content helps market your business online and leads to a high conversion rate.
Here are some specific areas you need to digitize to
survive in today’s tech-driven business environment.
1. Introduce
the Cloud
Cloud-based operations can save your business tons of
cash in data storage while making your information more secure. There was a
point when you had to have a physical server for each of your business’s
functions. A server for staff/payroll records, a server for the sales and
inventory records and another for your admin systems.
Businesses also needed servers for their core operations
and peripheral systems. All this meant substantial expenses; besides purchasing
the servers, you had to see to their maintenance and have a team of experts to
look after them.
Introducing the cloud or moving your operations to the
cloud means you don’t have to invest in all that hardware. It will reduce your
data storage and processing expenses to a monthly fee paid to a cloud services
provider.
These service providers will also take away the headache
of securing your data as they are up to date with the latest and best in data
security. They will do a better job of this than you can as it is their core
business.
2. Develop
a Website
Having a website was something you could have or choose
not to have back in the day. But in an age where 60
percent of the world’s population
uses the Internet, you cannot afford not to be online. Your first step should
be having a place on the World Wide Web where people can find information about
you and your products.
But you cannot afford to remain at that first step. To
ensure that website contributes meaningfully to the growth of your business,
you need to, first of all, make it easy to find. It’s easy for your site to get
lost among the millions of other sites on the Web. You need to make it easy for
search engines to find by employing appropriate search engine optimization
(SEO) techniques.
You also need to make your site contribute to your
overall business goals. Why only offer information about products on your site
when you can sell them right there as well?
3. Grow
an Online Presence
Growing your online presence means using all available
means to expand your website’s viewership. One of these is developing SEO
content for your site. And one of the critical components of good SEO is good content that adds real value to your site’s visitors. You must hire local SEO services to help you grow your website ranking through organic search and create a trustworthy experience for your visitors.
Another question you have to address when seeking to
grow your online presence is using social media to market your brand.
Establishing a steady following on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and other
social platforms can help you drive substantial traffic to your website. Hiring
a social media expert or using an agency is an important step to fully
harnessing the power of social networks for the growth of your business.
4. Utilize
Mobile or Applications
With more than 90
percent of the world’s Internet users
accessing the Web from their mobile devices, you can’t afford to have
mobile-ready content for your business. Your first step in this direction
should be making sure your website is mobile-friendly. This means that visitors
to your site should be able to navigate your site easily and access all the
functionalities of your site from their phones just as they would on a desktop.
Mobile apps provide another great marketing avenue for
your business. You can, for instance, place your ads strategically in apps that
are popular with your target audience.
5. Automate
Processes
There are many ways you can automate business processes
to make them more efficient. You can acquire a payroll system that does all the
spadework that goes into maintaining your employees’ payment records. You can
institute a point-of-sale system that allows your customers to get the menu and
order their meals without waiting for a server.
The key to successful automation is basing it on your
overall business goals and having a well-thought-out implementation strategy.
There are systems that can help you ensure that end-to-end process automation
is aligned with your business goals.
And there are a number of suitable options, each with
its own merits and shortcomings. You may have heard discussions relating to
this, like the UiPath
vs Power Automate debate.
No
Overnight Fixes
Digital transformation entails several steps and doesn’t
happen overnight. For it to be successful, it needs to start with a strategy
that identifies areas for automation and prioritizes them. You then need to
embark on implementation, focusing on your overarching business goals.
