What Is Digital Transformation? Its Role in Business

Digital transformation is a process of change that directly affects every aspect of a business. It should start and end with the customer. In this article, Mona Media will help you understand the concept of digital transformation? You will also see the difference between two easily confused concepts, digital transformation and digitization, along with other topics around digital transformation.

What is the concept of digital transformation?

Digital transformation is the process of integrating digital technologies into the different operations, culture and social aspects of a business, to meet the needs of a broad consumer market and changes inside the business itself.

Digital transformation takes a customer-based, digital-first approach to every aspect of a business, from business models to the customer experience to business processes and operations.

Digital transformation is not only about traditional roles such as sales, marketing or customer service. It should start and end with how a business thinks about and interacts with its customers. Moving from paper to spreadsheets to smart applications for managing operations is a chance to rethink how you do business, how you attract a broad customer base, and how you use modern technology across every activity.

The difference between digital transformation and digitization

The difference between digital transformation and digitization lies in people and lasting value. For digital transformation to be thorough, everyone in the business, from leadership to staff, needs to become more flexible and technology-literate.

Digital transformation creates lasting value. For that to happen, a business needs a long-term plan and plenty of time to work effectively. The process's sustainability shows in several ways, such as integration, convenient technology support and a customer-oriented way of operating.

Why do businesses need digital transformation?

Meeting customers' constantly changing expectations

Customer expectations are the main driver of digital transformation. They change over time, and businesses need to keep up with them to serve customers better.

Pioneers that disrupted traditional markets, such as Amazon and Netflix, won market share from competitors by applying these technologies to keep improving user experience. They rely on the words and context customers use when searching, their video viewing history and product searches to make personalized recommendations.

Helps businesses survive in a fiercely competitive market economy

Leading the way in digital transformation helps a business make a lasting impression on consumers. What appears first is remembered deeply and fades slowly, even when others later offer similar things.

So before your competitors take the pioneer position, start adjusting to give customers a new experience. Customers expect to do all business digitally, anywhere and anytime, on any device, with all the supporting information and content they need.

You may also be interested in:

• Competitor analysis in 7 steps
• How to help businesses identify their competitive advantage

Withstanding the COVID-19 pandemic or a similar pandemic that may happen in the future

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the digital transformation efforts and progress of many organizations and businesses. The impact varied with the level of transformation and the field of operation.

Suppliers learned how to bring new products to market quickly and effectively. Retailers competed hard to offer customers new and safer ways to shop. Business owners adopted or expanded technologies to manage staff working from home.

In general, digital transformation helps businesses to:

• Rebuild business models such as e-commerce and electronic delivery…
• Optimize processes in supply chain management, new feature development and more…
• Keep improving the customer experience based on search, purchase and product viewing history..

Key digital transformation technologies

Artificial intelligence (AI) and automation

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies let computers or machines mimic abilities of the human mind. AI helps recognize objects, make decisions and more.

Combined with automation, AI can bring intelligence and real-time decision-making into any workflow. This pushes things in a positive direction, for example by creating innovative smart products. User and customer experiences become more and more personalized. Workflows are optimized for supply chain management, managing variables and much more.

Hybrid cloud

Hybrid cloud is a cloud computing infrastructure that connects on-premises IT resources, the public cloud (the standard cloud computing model) and a private cloud (dedicated virtual servers). A hybrid cloud can orchestrate and manage applications.

By creating a single, highly flexible cloud computing infrastructure that can run a huge workload, hybrid cloud delivers remarkably fast information processing, scaling and analysis of the information needed for digital transformation.

Microservices

Microservices is a particular approach used to develop software systems. It focuses on building single-function modules with specific, clear interfaces and operations. Combined with other factors, microservices can drive digital creation or disruption. It lets organizations deploy software ready for users or ship updated product features every day.

Internet of Things (IoT)

The Internet of Things in English is Internet of Things (IoT), which refers to billions of physical devices around the world connected to the internet, collecting and sharing data.

IoT devices are where digital technology is applied in practice. Applications such as supply chain logistics, self-driving cars and smart home controls generate real-time data to carry out automatic tasks (self-driving) or make decisions (avoiding obstacles on the road on their own).

Blockchain

Blockchain is a record of electronic transactions. It gives authorized users transparent information about all transactions and blocks unauthorized access. Organizations are using blockchain as the foundation for highly flexible supply chain transformations and cross-border financial services.

This article has covered what digital transformation is, why businesses today need to focus on it, and the key digital transformation technologies in use. We hope it adds to your understanding of what is digital transformation and the topics around this process.