A digital-first approach has become the priority of many companies, in an effort to cope with shifting demands. Here’s how to build an effective one.
Organizations have started changing the way they operate to keep up with customer needs and expectations. Specifically, a digital-first approach has become the priority of many companies, in an effort to cope with shifting demands. This is because, as a 2020 research by Deloitte has shown, digital technologies contribute significantly (22% increase) to the progress of a company’s goals, including financial returns, workforce diversity, and environmental targets. As illustrated by McKinsey (2020), this is why 38% of executives plan to invest more in technology, in order to become more competitive, while, according to a 2020 CIO research, 39% of CEOs consider digital transformation as the top priority for their CIOs. Companies with higher digital maturity illustrated 45% revenue growth in comparison to 15% for lower maturity companies, as a 2020 research conducted by Deloitte has revealed, while, according to a KPMG research, 25% of organizations around the globe have already implemented cloud-distributed technology on a large scale. In what follows, we will enumerate certain key aspects to consider for successfully building a digital first culture in your organization.
Be well-informed
For fostering a digital-first culture and developing a digital mindset, an organization needs to be well-informed and conduct meticulous internal and external assessments. To this end, you need to know how and where real value can be created, as well as be aware of the organization’s existing assets. Simultaneously, you should also be realistic with what the organization lacks in relation to competitors, particularly to the respective industry leaders. Once these are identified, employees can receive the appropriate digital skills training for acquiring the best customer service.
Also, be daring
Frequently, for successfully implementing a total digital transformation, the core of the business will need to drastically change. This encompasses a wide variety of organizational structures, including proposition, internal processes, marketing strategies, and use of technology. You should not be afraid of making adjustments and boldly embrace innovative changes that will benefit your company.
Managers should be leading the way
Any company’s ambassadors are, of course, its managers. Therefore, in order to lead the way and set an example to employees, managers need to be confident with the digital initiatives and processes that are enforced. At the moment, as a study by Microsoft has revealed, a large percentage of employees are currently skeptical over digital initiatives and the implementation of new technology, while more than half of employees fear that their job is threatened by automation. Managers should show to their employees that this is not the case by confidently supporting change themselves.
Implement new processes
Crucially, when you transform your organization to a digitally focused one, you need to ensure that the company’s practices and processes have also adapted to the digital journey you have embarked on. This can be facilitated by all-hands meetings and lunch-and-learns that will boost creativity and collaboration and give space for new ideas and processes to emerge.
Pursue learning opportunities
You can never learn everything or acquire sufficient digital skills, as continuous learning is always the case when we are discussing digital transformation. Within a culture of training and constant learning, employees remain focused, loyal, dedicated, and interested. Simultaneously, it provides them with the opportunity to share their ideas and feel heard.
Identify talents
For a company to successfully achieve their digital transformation goals, it requires patience to develop the necessary capabilities with regard to digital skills competency. The answer to this is the formation of the optimal team structures, which creates the need for new hires. Hence, the company needs to be able to identify talent and see a person’s potential and forward-thinking mindset for hiring right. This can be a time-consuming process, which, however, is the key to success.
For transforming your business culture and creating a digital first mindset among employees, Salesforce is the world’s #1 CRM and Enterprise Cloud Computing platform that guarantees optimum sales processes and empowers, among others, service, marketing, community, and analytics apps. With its 15 years of experience in the field of innovation, Salesforce is the ideal solution for helping your organization to develop a logical and flexible sales structure. This is accomplished via automating and running business processes through workflows and approvals, connecting and sharing files from external sources, and providing real time individual and team forecasts and performance comparison against planned quotas. What’s more, with this solution, your team can easily build custom reports and dashboards on all devices as well as enjoy optimized user access, permissions, and sharing rules. With Salesforce, you can also run and manage personalized campaigns through social networks and various different channels and form customized and branded communities to engage with customers and connect with your targeted markets.
If you have a midsize or a growing business, you will definitely be benefited by NetSuite, the first solution that offers intelligent, integrated, and simpler applications for significantly reducing your total cost of ownership (TCO). This solution encompasses ERP/Financials, inventory and all backend processes for over 30,000 organizations. More specifically, NetSuite’s system uses a single database for all corporate data in order to provide instant access to key performance metrics on real time dashboards, allowing you to take more effective decisions. At the same time, it enables companies to unite fragmented data and automate processes from end to end, faster, less expensive, and customized to your own needs and requirements.
For investing in a CRM (Salesforce) or/ and an ERP (Oracle NetSuite) solution that will help you achieve all your digital goals, NetU has the necessary experience and expertise to help companies make the leap to digital transformation. For more information on our solutions, contact us.