The Digital Transformation of Business

By John Chan

The business world is changing rapidly in the today’s marketplace. A key force behind this change is the impact of digital technology. Digital technology is altering the undercurrents of the marketplace and the rapidity of how organizations to respond to changes in the market. Simultaneously, digital technologies have changed how people research, engage with and purchase an organization’s products and services.

Your customers and prospects have now fully embraced the digitalization of their life experiences. For example, many people now watch programs on the Internet (e.g., Netflix, Hulu, etc.), use Amazon or Yelp for product and service reviews and send money via electronic means. Customers now assume that they will receive automated assistance from organizations. They will review Social Media communities for an understanding of various topics and utilize mobile apps. The digital transformation is now immensely impacting the global marketplace as demonstrated by these statistics:

• The majority of the world’s population has a smartphone device with projections of global smartphone subscribers reaching 6 billion in 2021.
• Online retail transactions encompass 52% of US retail sales.
• 84% of US banking customers have used online banking in the past three months and 43% of these customers have used mobile banking services in these three past months.
• Most B2B buying agents will research business purchases via the Web instead of communicating with other organizations’ sales reps.

In addition, digital technologies will change the business methodologies of many organizations. The organizations that adapt to the use of the digital technology tools will prosper in the future marketplace. If applied in a proper manner, digital technologies can decrease costs, while increasing revenue for the organization. Key manufacturing companies have spent over $9.3 billion dollars on software products to assist their clients to construct, administer and augment complex industrial operations. To insure that the organization continues to be competitive in the digital world, management must ensure that their products, insights, employee processes and business operations are all digitalized.

The swift adoption of digital technologies in the marketplace is leading organizations to change their business methodologies and processes. If an organization does not adapt to this changing business environment, its share of the market will decline as its competitors will reap the benefits of their own adaption of digital technologies.

In my next blog post, I will discuss how organizations can respond to the digital transformation phenomena by digitizing their business strategies.

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  John Chan is the ISM Software Lab Director, is responsible for software testing and defining the evaluation criteria for The Guide to Mobile and Social CRM and the CRM software offered on ISM’s Reviews Online service.