The digital revolution is changing our professional lives as much as it is changing our personal lives. Data is driving huge changes in commerce, and social media has revolutionized the way businesses interact with their consumers.
In the midst of this transformation, Singapore’s digitalisation is a notable example of a strategic approach to embrace and leverage technology. The city-state has integrated digital innovation into various sectors, enhancing efficiency and global competitiveness. Adapting to these changes is incredibly challenging for many companies, especially if they became well established in the previous era.
Every business manager and owner needs to adapt their company and its structure to the digital age and make the changes early or risk being left behind.
Reorganization For The Digital Future
In every aspect of life, changes bring reforms. Many businesses are struggling to adapt their business practices and organizational structures to the digital age. Data and the digital revolution are making changes to how we sell and market products and manage evolving customer expectations.
Management hierarchies and staffing structures need to be altered to help a business become more reactive and adaptable if businesses are going to thrive in the digital future.
Taking an organizational design course from the MIT Sloan School of Management can equip you with the knowledge and tools you need to make a digital transformation throughout your company. By making sensible changes to your organizational design for digital transformation you will be able to adapt to the demands of the digital age and to the changes that are ahead of us.
Being reactive to change will be a key part of surviving the rapid and exponential changes to marketplaces that the digital revolution is bringing.
Incorporating Technology And Data
The technology, both software and hardware, that is fueling the digital revolution is an important element of the changes that are happening in businesses. Companies need to look for ways that these new technologies can help streamline processes and boost productivity without having a negative impact on their workforces.
It is vital that the decisions businesses make on which technology to implement are outcome-driven, rather than making the change for the change’s sake.
Every new technology carries an element of risk, and that must be a part of the evaluation process. Many businesses are now utilizing the power of cloud computing to speed up internal communication and data sharing, but this introduces new risks that must be mitigated.
Online threats are numerous in the digital age, and data has value to thieves as well as businesses. Integrated cloud servers into your IT infrastructure will necessitate implementing stronger cyber security measures to protect sensitive consumer information such as financial details.
Adding Value To Customer Experiences
More commerce is conducted online than ever before, and this is only going to increase in the future. As more consumers use eCommerce websites to make purchases or apps to identify and buy products, the experience they have is going to influence their impression of a business. A poorly built website or malfunctioning app can be detrimental to sales figures or a business’s ability to grow.
The companies that invest in customer experience and make it consistent across all platforms will be securing their future.
Positive customer experiences are not only vital in the digital era, but they are also a weapon in your marketing arsenal. Consumers are sharing their shopping experiences faster and wider than ever before. The importance of word of mouth has been well-known in business for decades, but now those words can travel across continents and through time.
One bad review or social media post can last for years and can impact your business in ways that one-to-one word of mouth never could before. Likewise, adding value to customer experiences and making them consistently positive can create a marketing campaign for you. Just as bad consumer experiences are shared widely, so are positive ones.
Leveraging Data
Every business is now generating massive volumes of data. Whether this is done by customer service agents or the sales team interacting with customers, or by customers themselves using your business’s website, terabytes of data are created every day. Each byte has a huge potential. By leveraging your data and conducting comprehensive data analysis, any business can glean insights and identify trends and customer demands that can give them an advantage in the marketplace.
Most companies are finding that the more they mine their data, the more uses they find for it. Customer-generated data can help you conduct market research with a few taps of a keyboard and the click of a mouse.
Inefficiencies in customer relationship management can be identified quickly, helping you to streamline your customer experience and add value through faster purchase processes.
To be successful in the digital era, every business needs to start analyzing its data and using it to create new products, and services, as well as adding value to its customer experience without making large financial investments.
Changing The Workplace
Digital technology is making remote working not only possible but also preferable. There are some huge potential savings on the balance sheet available if your business can implement remote working or hybrid working schemes.
The biggest savings are obvious. You can reduce the amount of money spent on powering and heating offices if they lay dormant most of the time. If you can switch to a complete remote setup, you can remove the cost of the office space altogether.
Not only do remote working initiatives offer financial savings, but they can also save time and add capacity. Remote working is popular with staff, and happy workers are productive workers. Most businesses that adopt remote working and hybrid working policies report a boost in productivity at every level of their company.
Doing more with the same staffing level adds a massive amount of value to the business, saving money. Adopting working from home practices can be a win-win for businesses if implemented correctly and continuously monitored.
Making Marketing Social
If your business is not taking social media marketing seriously it is missing out. Apps like Facebook and Instagram are driving sales for small and independent businesses as well as the big boys. This is not only through paid advertisements and collaborations with powerful influencers but also through their own posts and interactions on the apps. Smart and engaging social media posts can be used to supercharge sales in a way that traditional media could never achieve.
Social media also generates data. This can be used to create targeted marketing that puts key demographics in its sights. From a very small investment of time and money, huge sales numbers can be generated from a single viral post.
Social media also creates an avenue for communication with your customer base as well as potential customers. Reaching new people and spreading brand awareness is easy on social media, and then a business can sit back and reap the rewards.
The early changes in the business world that digital technology is bringing are only the early, small ripples of change. Bigger disruptions are coming down the pipe. By adapting early, every company can not only structure itself to take advantage of these early changes but it can also be set up to anticipate and react to the changes that are coming.
If you do not take these new demands seriously and begin to alter the way you do business now, you risk falling behind your competitors and being left in the dark ages while the others thrive in this new digital marketplace.
