Tips for Successful Digital Transformation: Week #1

Digital touchpoints have never been more important to the success of businesses of all sizes, across just about every industry. Unfortunately, digitally transforming a business can be a daunting task. To help break down the process into more manageable steps, this month we’re bringing you a new tip for digital transformation success for every work day. We’ll provide a summary of these best practices in a weekly blog post throughout July. We hope the series inspires transformation in your business.

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Week #1

For many, the first week of digital transformation may be simply discovering that your organization needs to undergo change and determining what to consider before you can begin the journey. This week, we’ll cover the preparatory stages of your digital transformation journey.

Day 1 — Recognize the need for change.

How do you know when it’s time for digital transformation? In our experience, these are some of the signs that it may be time to rethink your business approach:

• You’re losing customers.Today your customers want to engage with your business on their timeline and in their preferred way (such as a mobile app, chat bot, or other digital channel that provides them access 365/24/7). You may not be equipped to handle this or you offer these services but glitches, bugs, and suboptimal experiences are scaring customers away.
• Employees complain that business units and processes are siloed. If one part of the organization cannot communicate with or benefit from the knowledge and data of other departments, it’s time to rethink your business model.
• Antiquated backend technology limits the digital solutions that product and brand managers can launch.
• Your employees struggled to do their jobs from home during COVID-19 due to inadequate digital infrastructure.
• Minimal investment in new technology has been made over the past decade, indicating that you may be missing out on advances with significant positive impact.

Day 2 — The first step

If you’re feeling like your organization needs to increase its digital agility but you’re not sure where to start, first look around — opportunities to transform are all around you. Successful transformations benefit from serendipitous discoveries that are not ignored.

Day 3 — Find opportunities

Not sure where to find serendipitous discoveries? (I mean, it’s hard to plan serendipity, right?) Consider what sources of customer and employee feedback are available to you. Think app reviews, Yelp, internal research, customer service logs, etc. Then, start with points of friction — where are customers and employees running into trouble? This often leads you to the innovations that need to take priority in order to retain and attract customers. Your homework for today: map out the top three opportunities you can identify based on these platforms.

Day 4 — Know your audience.

This may seem a little like a day 3 tip, but here you’re focusing not on how your audience reacts to your product or service but rather who they are, their behaviors, habits, and preferences. Any transformation requires a deep understanding of those affected by it. Do the research and understand the intimate details of those who will be engaging with your technology. Come back to them throughout the transformation process and empathize, analyze, and understand how they would react before, during, and after your digital release.

For today, think about your sources of data. Do you have a rewards program that captures customer information, access to a syndicated database that you could pull user information from or could you mine customer service records? All of these could be valuable ways to better understand your users.

Day 5 — Keep your eyes on the road.

Don’t overly fixate on what your competitors are doing — instead focus on what you could be doing to make your customer experience as seamless as possible. Remember that every business is different and it’s customers have different needs and opportunities to delight. What makes your customers different and how can you delight them in a way that uniquely fits with your brand?

We hope you found inspiration in our first five tips — come back next week when we’ll be sharing five new ways to continue on your transformational journey.

Need more resources to get you started on your digital transformation journey?

We’re currently offering Friction Reports to companies looking to gain insights on the most widely-used mobile apps. We took a look at how thousands of customers rate and review mobile apps in key industries and compiled that data so that you can see where points of friction exist and use that to fuel your business for success.

Originally published at https://www.mobiquity.com.