Prioritizing objectives before undergoing a digital transformation is crucial to its success. Defining the objectives helps allocate resources, improve internal and external communication with employees and others, and track progress toward ultimate achievement.
Successful digital transformation requires careful goal-setting and an adaptable approach. By utilizing digital technologies with purpose, companies can drive sustainable action, enhance value for stakeholders, and enhance customer experience. However, success will depend on the organization’s capacity to embrace change.
What Is A Digital Transformation Strategy?
The concept of a digital transformation strategy has been around for a while. Still, as technology and customer requirements evolve, it’s important to reassess and adapt the strategy continuously.
A digital transformation strategy is a plan for a company to integrate technology and digital processes into all areas of its operations to improve performance, increase efficiency, and stay competitive in a rapidly changing digital landscape. It involves a comprehensive reassessment of an organization’s business model, processes, culture, and capabilities to identify opportunities to leverage technology; data to drive growth and innovation and improve customer experiences.
A successful digital transformation strategy requires a clear understanding of the company’s goals, the current technology landscape, and the impact of the transformation on all stakeholders. This often leads to a realignment of business objectives, focusing on using technology to address customer needs and pain points more effectively.
Ten Potential Objectives For Digital Transformation
When embarking on a digital transformation journey, it is crucial to set specific and measurable objectives that align with the overall strategy and vision of the organization. Below are ten potential objectives for digital transformation.
1. Improving Productivity
Digital adoption profoundly impacts the human resources aspect of a business. Therefore, technology integration in the learning process is critical for the development of companies in today’s fast-paced digital world.
Technology enables ideas to be heard and executed with greater precision, making it easier to track employees’ work and improve performance. Automating manual processes can increase efficiency, productivity, and employee satisfaction. Automating repetitive tasks makes employees focus on more creative and meaningful work that supports achieving business goals.
For example, an automated system may only require invoice approval if the dollar amount exceeds a certain number. This automation frees up approvers to focus on more important tasks.
2. Optimizing Customer Service For Customer Satisfaction
A digital transformation can be driven by the need to upgrade an outdated customer service system. The new system should facilitate quick and efficient customer service by allowing agents to access customer information and past tickets easily and quickly. In addition, it can lead to faster case resolution, potentially improving the customer experience by integrating self-service options.
3. Customer Experience and Satisfaction
The foremost goal of any digital strategy is to improve the customer experience and gain a competitive edge. This can be achieved by leveraging artificial intelligence and data-driven insights to understand customers better and optimize supply chain management.
It involves simplifying and enhancing the company’s website and allows customers to easily find the products or services they need, leading to a more seamless and satisfactory experience.
The simplification process may involve streamlining the website to make it easier for system administrators and marketers to update and simplify customer payment processes In addition, it leads to a simplified shopping experience, reducing the need for customer support calls and ultimately improving the overall customer experience.
Transforming the customer experience enables businesses to gain deeper insights into their current client base and effectively target new prospects.
4. Improving The Employee Experience
Employees usually perform various administrative tasks, such as updating their addresses, enrolling in benefits, and completing performance management surveys.
Digital transformation offers the opportunity to streamline business processes and improve the employee experience. A new system may also provide access to previously unavailable employee services.
5. Streamlining Accounts Payable Processes
Automation of manual processes is a starting point for improving accounts payable operations, but it also offers additional benefits in other ways.
It can streamline the process for vendors to submit invoices and receive payment updates. Internally, a new system may enhance reporting capabilities, user experience, and integration with other finance systems.
6. Automating Warehouse Jobs
Distribution centers can benefit by saving time and costs from automating as much of the order fulfillment and shipping process as possible, reducing time and costs. However, this type of process can be expensive, so companies must plan carefully and implement it in stages if necessary.
Automating warehouse processes can also minimize errors in the picking process, leading to fewer returns and customer support calls, further improving efficiency.
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7. Improving Scheduling and Timesheets
The digitization of scheduling and time tracking can significantly benefit both employees and the company.
Online schedules allow employees to access their schedules from anywhere, and mobile apps can simplify the check-in and checkout process for hourly workers. In addition, digital timesheets streamline the tracking of employees’ shifts, enabling the transfer of data to payroll and analysis of hours worked versus output.
8. Automating Setting Up and Updates of User Accounts
IT faces the crucial task of setting up and managing user accounts and providing employees access to email accounts, systems, network drives, and various other applications based on their role. With new hires and departures, IT must frequently add or delete user accounts.
Automating this process saves time and resources for the IT team to tackle more complex initiatives.
9. Improving Reporting and Dashboards
Companies can potentially improve their reporting and dashboards by acquiring advanced systems. However, outdated applications may limit data integration from multiple systems, restricting the ability of employees to create sophisticated reports and dashboards.
For instance, upgrading to a more advanced reporting system allows it to analyze crucial performance metrics, such as customer service employee performance, customer feedback, and case resolution statistics.
10. Eliminating Company Systems
Eliminating duplicate systems can be an objective of digital transformation, as companies tend to acquire multiple systems over time. As the organization grows, different departments or business units may end up using similar applications.
The company can save money on licensing costs and streamline its technology landscape by eliminating these redundant systems.