Digital transformation is the operational, cultural, and organisational change of a company’s ecosystem. This is achieved by using smart integrated technologies and processes across every level and function of the organisation in a strategic and futuristic way. New capability developments are becoming more centred around the transformational landscape in order to be more people-orientated, agile, customer-centric, streamlined, and efficient.

To take away from this, it’s not always going to be about the technology or the kinds of disruption that comes with it. What it really signifies is that the value, people, and optimization will be able to rapidly adapt through the intelligent use of technology and information while focusing on the changes in the present and the future.

The Digital Landscape

The digital landscape thrives on transformation. All the while, organisations are currently experiencing present day shifts and new trends that lead to these shifts and changes. One approach to embracing change and achieving transformation is by forming a solid digital transformation strategy that allows for faster deployment.

All of this can be induced by several factors and more often than not, at the same time.

1. The expectations of customers and the level of their behaviour.
2. New economic realities
3. Shifts in society
4. Industry disruption
5. Emerging or existing technologies

It’s about keeping the various connected intermediary goals in mind as the digital journey moves towards optimizing all systems, divisions and business processes within the ecosystem. This is all happening in a more hyper-connected age where creating the right channels from start to finish is in function within that journey.

Digital Disruption

Digital disruption is described as and is used in the sense that organisations are challenged by new or existing companies known to have mastered their new tech and digital skills. However, we can look at digital disruption as a shift in the power of all relationships. As a human phenomenon, disruption is a shift in the way people use technology, ultimately affecting their expectations and behaviours. However, even as forthcoming as new technology is when it comes to the broader spectrum of consumer and organisational experiences, it can lead to leveraging the use of technology to address the changes and behaviours.

Digital disruptions can be caused by numerous factors:

Emerging Technologies

How customers, partners and stakeholders use and adopt technologies is the leading cause of disruption than the actual technology itself. The top technologies that have the potential to cause disruptions are: IoT technologies, artificial intelligence, virtual reality etc. More so, when these technologies are connected and enable new applications and features, this is when it has the potential to be at its most disruptive.

Customer Demands & Behaviour

When technologies turn into business challenges, how the consumer uses and adopts the technology plays a huge role in disruption. With access to various technologies and that user adoption is becoming more integrated into business strategies, this encourages and promotes change – especially when an organisation wants to stay competitive in the market and needs help optimizing their processes and customer experiences. The shifts can even be felt on a societal level as the needs of the customers are also left impacted, which means organisations can leverage new technologies to meet new demands.

The Innovation & Invention phenomena

Whether it’s innovation in healthcare, science, economics or politics – any form of societal influence can become a potential business challenge. Advancements and novel approaches within an industry or sector have the potential to reshape and change the way society adopts and interacts with those innovations. It’s about being prepared for anything and everything that is likely to shift.

Industry or Ecosystem Induced

The ecosystem in which businesses find themselves is constantly changing, as well as the interdependent and connectedness of things. This has led us to interacting with new technologies to meet those shifts. For instance, when COVID-19 made its global appearance in 2020, small businesses to large enterprises were forced to accelerate digital transformation to meet their customers’ demands. Organisations also have to deal with geo-political changes, societal shifts, and much like COVID-19, unpredictable events.

The Future Scope of digital transformation

According to an i-scoop article,  “the pace of digital transformation started accelerating due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Organisations and societies as a whole needed to leverage technologies across all aspects of business and even into our everyday lives. We’ve seen more and more obvious areas to become more digital than ever before.”

Areas of the “new normal” in a hyper-connected age include:

1. The introduction to Hybrid/remote working
2. People have started using various channels for specific purposes for the first time.
3. Sales and marketing leverage off these new shifts with newer technology and applications.

One of the longer-lasting consequences to note is that most organisations don’t revise and prepare their digital transformation roadmaps and structures, along with their investments in digital experiences and ecosystems. By now, at least 30% of organisations have accelerated any form of innovation to future-proof their business.

Where customers are concerned, digital transformation has taken centre stage when it comes to analysing their demands and behaviours as the customer experience is known to be one of the key focal points. This is where business and IT are able to meet from a transformational perspective. However, it’s more than just the functions that start from front-end to customer-facing interactions, including the touchpoints. It’s about linking the entire enterprise to shift as one giant phase that optimizes the culture, organisation, operations and last but not least,  the overall customer experience.

Learn more from The CRM Team on how your business can transform its digital landscape with automation.