A blessing in disguise, due to two years of the pandemic, digital and mobile have become routine. Businesses that didn’t wait for ‘better times’ and adapted to the new digital realities of lockdown – Zoom sessions, remote working, online ordering and the new needs of customers and employees – have survived and grown stronger.
With the unprecedented uncertainty caused by COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine, businesses faced new challenges. Weaknesses in business processes, falling demand, and declining productivity have become evident. In such times, improving performance and preparing the team to function in a changed world is important.
The biggest growth driver and at the same time challenge is the digital transformation of business.
Statista states that the global investment in digital transformation is expected to double between the years 2022 from 1.6 trillion U.S. dollars and 2026 to 3.4 trillion U.S. dollars.
Digital Transformation Is Not Just Electronic Document Management
Digital transformation is a much broader process than implementing new technology. It leads to changes in business model, company structure, new skills and processes. This is organically accompanied and driven by new technologies.
Executives say that the top benefits of DT are improved operational efficiencies (40 percent), faster time to market (36 percent), and increased ability to meet customer expectations (35 percent).
Digitalize or…
With the evolving digital economy and employee mobility, digitalization of business processes for SMEs is just a matter of time.
Employees have become more mobile. Working from anywhere in the world is a usual format for collaboration, and working from tablets and smartphones is reducing the need to interact with stationary equipment in the offline office.
We scan documents from our phones, write texts in Google Docs from our tablets, and exchange files on the go on public transportation. Employees’ approaches to doing day-to-day work have already changed.
The increasing volume of information requires the ability to analyze, to make decisions faster. Automation and digitalization of monotonous processes frees up time and space for ideas, new solutions and other activities.
Working the old-fashioned way is a pain
Staying on the side of the traditional paperwork approach, business loses in comparison to working digitally.
It takes longer to find potential clients – it takes longer to get money. Improperly targeting the market means wasting time on remodeling. A poorly built sales pipeline slows down processes at all stages of the deal. What’s needed is a digital solution like EasyBusiness, designed for effective lead generation, online prospecting and lead management, accelerating sales and increasing conversion rates.
Where do you start if you’re a digital ‘dummy’?
You know the answer – start with training. Lack of digital skills and inability to use technology is one of the main barriers to the digital future.
The second barrier to adopting new things is not understanding the technology itself and how technological innovation can be applied to your business. But keep your spirits up, it’s all learnable and not that hard either.
Take crash courses in digital and key emerging technologies: artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, cybersecurity, robotics, cloud computing, etc.
Next, analyze your business processes, map out the chain of steps you use to work with your customers, and see which processes can be digitized or automated.
9 actions to keep your business afloat
We are not able to analyze all your business processes instead of you, but we are able to offer you a few tools to choose from that you can ‘try on’ to your business, evaluate how well they work for you and then use.
1. The first thing most businesses start with is automation of a company internal processes, because without automation of the backend it is impossible to digitize the frontend, i.e. customer relations. First of all it is necessary to automate internal decision-making processes: organize electronic document management with digital signature; if it comes to financial decisions – implement e-invoicing, automated warehouse; if it is about sales – organize work with data to feed your sales and marketing team and to make the right decisions. And here you need to choose a true digital solution.
2. Personalization of customer interactions – another digital tool to improve the shopping experience. Machine learning algorithms process all past information about customer orders, their transactions and their frequency, looking at other databases, which allows analyzing the shopping cart and making personalized recommendations for products or services.
3. Artificial intelligence (AI) tool. Small and medium-sized businesses have not been at the forefront of adopting AI, but the tools and infrastructure are now widely affordable and time-tested. 83% of companies claim that AI is a top priority in their business plans – and that’s a lot!
4. If your sector of activity is not retail and you consult or produce, then your task is to provide remote internal processes using online communication tools. Over the past two years we have learned new words: Zoom, Google meet, MS Teams. These are all worth using.
5. You need to become a full-fledged player in the digital B2B marketplace. And if you haven’t yet created an online presentation of your company to work with potential customers or new suppliers, now is the best time to do it. Digital marketing helps you meet the challenge to increase online visibility, attract traffic and generate inbound leads.
6. Often your employees, working remotely from home, overload the home Wi-Fi with their ‘heavy’ presentations or Zoom calls, preventing the housemates from performing their tasks online. A mobile hot spot can be a lifesaver in this situation.
7. And in the case of robotized production it is worth thinking on a larger scale – here you can’t do without optical Internet, and soon without 5G. So take care in advance to have high quality internet in production zone.
8. Procurement processes also require online support. If you intend to speed up your search for new suppliers, web sites like Kompass.com are specifically designed to help you find the right suppliers in no time and improve your value chain.
9. Maximize the digitization of your sales funnel and pipeline. You should include the implementation of Sales and Marketing tools for Lead and Customer Management (such as EasyBusiness and Sales Accelerator) to speed up sales and increase conversion rate, productivity and efficiency of the teams.
To sum it up
Integration of digital and mobile technologies into your business is no longer a whim or trend, but an urgent need that will give your business the resilience and survivability it needs to succeed. Use Kompass solutions to digitally transform your business right away
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