DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION – IS IT JUST ABOUT IT AND TECHNOLOGY?

Most of people are thinking that digital transformation is just about IT or Technologies such as mobile application, cloud computing, the Internet of Things, big data, blockchain and artificial intelligence.so they only focused investment on IT and Technology while building and executing their digital strategies. They just implemented a shiny new digital front end or mobile apps to solve the issue of their disparate legacy systems and enable them to quickly adapt to customer expectations. Then their digital strategies were failed at execution phase, because their current business model could not fit with their digital strategies, or they have not understood their customer journey and customer experience, which are including customer understanding, experience design and customer touch points, or their people have not enough capability to execute the digital strategies, or even the corporate culture has not been ready for digital transformation. Therefore, the digital transformation is not just specific about IT or Technology, it is also about redefining entire your business strategy, and even changing your corporate culture. In addition, digital transformation requires end-to-end processes from the front end all the way through the business to the back office, enabling a truly data-driven capability and a digital experience for customers, brokers, affiliate partners, and internal users.

The key important factor in digital transformation is data (data about consumers, about competitors, about supply chain, about your markets, etc.), especially real-time data. The real-time data can support a company to transform this company business processes and business models for improving customer experience. However, you should know how to use data for your analytics, critical business decision and business intelligence. It will help business to take the right decisions leading them towards innovation and success.

In fact, I also shared with our Head of Product and Strategic planning that data is the key of our digital transformation strategies, but we have not invested much in data analytics and building our data model to support sales and to understand our customers and customer’s preferences. So it is very critical to build a business intelligence team, who are able to gather data, analyze data, and then build data model to support business analytics and prediction based on collected data. In parallel, we would build our data lake and Omni-channel marking automation, which support us to have 360 degree view of customer data with data consolidated; to consolidate brand interaction that can be drilled down into based on channels, interactions and transactions for every single customer; to have ability to track our customer’s multi-channel path as a single customer’s journey.

Furthermore, to maximize upsell and cross-sell opportunities and optimize your sales channel strategies to fit your customers’ needs and preferences, you should gather customer data from different sources such as social media and listen to what your customers want through their posts, feedbacks, reviews, and online sentiments. These data also help your company tailor your sales channels for more personalized services and engagement.

Finally, digital changing everything, it is changing your corporate strategy, business processes, market capabilities, even the roles & skills that you need to fill by outsourcing, hiring and training in order to clear the gaps between the company and technology. Forrester Report in 2017 showed that 74% companies have digital strategies, but only 15% companies have skills and capabilities to execute digital strategies.

In hyper-competitive business environment, embracing digital transformation is a survival and growth requirement rather than a luxury. Digital transformation enables your company to open up new sales channels, find new markets and opportunities, increase your revenues, and improve your efficiency. But to fully embrace digital transformation, your company must start with capturing, securing, integrating, and utilizing quality data. How about your company digital strategies and execution? And is your company ready for digital transformation journey?

Phan Hoai Nam – FOUNDER/CTO CREATIVE ERA