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4 Pitfalls Of Digital Transformation

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Digital Transformation|4 Pitfalls Of Digital TransformationWhether you enhance your digital presence or tweak your website, there’s a good chance that you’re transforming your processes for the sake of the internet. Online is so essential that you can’t afford to miss out, with everything from marketing to lead generation and communication receiving a boost. Even costs drop when companies invest in digital transformation practises.

Adapting to the digital world isn’t an afterthought since the failure to react could leave you in a tricky position. However, with all the benefits that digital transformation offers, it’s tempting to assume there are zero side-effects. This isn’t true. As with any investment, you must be aware of the pitfalls beforehand. Otherwise, nasty surprises may pop-up out of the blue.

The concern is that you don’t want to fall behind. Still, it’s smarter to be safe than sorry. In this post, we’ll walk you through the four biggest consequences of digital transformation and how to avoid them.

Improved Customer Experience

On the face of it, this only seems to be a good thing. As technology enhances the user experience, you can encourage more people to buy goods and services, boosting your conversion and click-through rates. Although this is true, and several companies have taken advantage, an improved UX sets a precedent.

Today, consumers expect a certain level of service, and if they don’t receive it, they’ll bounce to a competitor. As a result, you get one chance to make a positive first impression. If you don’t, your market share may begin to shrink. 92% of leaders are already developing advanced strategies, which highlights the need to keep up with the latest developments.

One way to do this is to enroll in college courses. Poetically, you can do it online to reduce the impact on your routine and save money. Attending seminars and networking events is a must as this is where you can make contacts and increase your knowledge base.

Raises Data Collection Processes

Again, collecting data doesn’t appear to have a dark side. If anything, you should hoard as much information as you can because it contains the answers to the questions that will stop the business from failing. As big data has proved, the right info will reveal the actionable insights that you can implement in real-time to improve the UX and raise awareness of the brand.

But, as you will see with organizations regardless of the size, collecting data is a contentious issue. Firstly, customers are wary of the practices after the Cambridge Analytica scandal that is alleged to have affected the 2016 election. Also, creating a data culture encourages you to collect information for the sake of it.

Once this happens, you take unnecessary risks. Why? It’s because lengthy registration forms turn-off shoppers to the point where they’ll abandon their baskets. Nothing is worth a lost sale, especially data you won’t use.

StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Digital Transformation|4 Pitfalls Of Digital TransformationDigital Transformation Is Time-consuming

You’ve got to spend a lot of time digitizing records to complete the process. Of course, it’s massively time-consuming and only adds to your workload. Aside from the imbalance between your job and your life, you must consider how the extra responsibility impacts your focus and concentration levels.

As the boss, it’s essential to take care of the most important jobs. However, if you’re too busy overseeing the switch to digital, you may easily miss crucial meetings and deadlines. The answer is to outsource the role to a third-party since managed IT services are reliable and have many more resources.

Therefore, outsourcers not only use their expertise to improve the standard, but they cut money and time wastage by concentrating on a single job. Hiring one is a no-brainer. The trick is to work out which business or individual is the most suitable for your specifications.

Virtual Collaboration

Communicating effectively is something that managers attempt to iron out regularly. After all, when you and your team interact positively, there are fewer mistakes. Plus, everyone understands their job and what’s expected of them daily. Digital communication is varied, and that’s the potential pitfall.

With too many channels to choose from, it’s common for employees to miss vital notifications as they can’t check all their accounts every five minutes. And, which one people prefer is a personal decision as they may find an email more professional, whereas a text message is instant.

You must set policies that outline the platform workers should use during business hours. That way, sharing essential data and collaborating healthily will be the norm, not the exception that proves the rule.

Your business needs to go digital, yet are you ready for the potential consequences?

Why Data is Vitally Important to Your Business

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StrategyDriven OPM (organizational performance measures) Article |importance of data|Why Data is Vitally Important to Your BusinessBusinesses have always understood the importance of data and how it relates to their success. From the very beginning, companies knew they needed to understand the market and their customers to make money; the difference was, back then, collecting and accessing data wasn’t easy. That’s not the case today, as technology has helped automate many aspects of data collection, allowing companies of all sizes access to useful information. In fact, nowadays, we have access to so much data, the bigger problem is knowing which data to use and how best to interpret it.

For data to be useful, you have to be able to turn it into actionable insights, and this is where the challenge lies for businesses today. If your company can learn to make better use of its data, it can have huge benefits across your organization.

Decision Making

We make decisions based on the evidence we have available to us. In theory, the more evidence you have access to, the easier it is to make the correct decision, but this is not necessarily the case in real life. When you have an unlimited amount of evidence, it makes it far more challenging to find evidence that will lead you to the right decision. To find the most pertinent evidence to make more informed choices, your company needs people who understand data and know how to apply that data.

You can have all the data in the world, but if you don’t have employees who understand things like SQL join types and can interpret the data, it’s of limited use to your decision-making process.

Problem Solving

Without the evidence that data gives you, it becomes more difficult to spot potential problems and find solutions to fix them. Even the most straightforward processes create data, and this data can help you when problems develop with that process. When you scale this up over an entire business, the data allows you to better understand and solve the issues affecting your organization.

Track Performance

Being able to see how we’re performing against our goals is a crucial element of business success. When correctly interpreted, data can allow you to see how you’re performing in key areas. The insights you gain will enable you to evaluate all areas of your business without any complications. The right people will be able to turn vast amounts of complex data into easy to understand performance metrics that everyone can use.

Improve Processes

This information allows you to make the changes that improve processes across your business. Small changes can have a big effect on the efficiency of your business, and we all have access to the kind of data that can lead to these changes. The challenge is finding the right people to turn that data into actionable insights. The evidence you need to make informed business decisions is there in your data; you just need to be able to find it and use it effectively.

No matter what size your business is, data can play a crucial part in your success.

Stop Drowning In Data And Create An Optimisation Plan

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StrategyDriven Organizational Performance Measures Article |Data Management|Stop Drowning In Data And Create An Optimisation Plan One thing is certain – Big data is big business. As the ways in which we can gather information have expanded almost infinitely, so the data we have stacks up and up. We’ve been promised the earth by understanding our customers better – enhanced profits, more repeat sales, higher average transaction values, loyal brand advocates. And while it’s true that data can deliver all of that, for most businesses, it doesn’t. Because data is a tool like any other, and when it’s misused or not used to its full potential, you’re not likely to see the results. Most businesses collect data without any clear idea of why they are collecting it, and their marketing strategy gets stifled under the sheer amount of available information. Instead of driving the data and mining it to find the relevant parts, it drives them. Learning how to effectively use data is highly individual to each company and their operations and KPIs, but there are some building blocks for good data hygiene and usage that work across all sectors and business types. So, how can you stop drowning in data and start using it to your advantage?

Closing The Feedback Loop

Often we believe that we should be coming up with a lot of colourful looking reports covered in pie charts and bar graphs that we can point to as concrete evidence of macro trends affecting our operations or changes in customer experience. But what do all those colourful reports actually show? Data in and of itself is literally just a bunch of numbers, and all the reporting you like isn’t going to make much of a difference to your bottom line. The most important output is actually the insights that only shrewd analysis can show, and this is the single most important function of the modern marketer. Seeing meanings, patterns and stories is the important part, not the raw data itself. Knowing what all these metrics mean for your business and what action should be taken is the only thing which makes data collection worthwhile.

Make Sure You Measure The Right Thing

The symbiosis between overarching business strategy and analytics can be a tough balance to get right, because both should feed off the other. What you measure should be dependent on what you want to optimise in line with the wider goals you have for your business. But equally, what your goals are should be at least partially dependant on the customer feedback that you amass through your data. Skew the balance too far one way or the other and it’s not going to work in your favour. Setting good metrics for your business is absolutely key to the success you’ll get. Look at things such as which channels drive the most conversions for your business, which landing pages on your website have the lowest conversion rates, what your average order value is in different segments of customers. Underpinning all of these metrics need to be two important things – a great CRM system which can allow you to use these insights to create dynamic marketing campaigns which really respond to individual customer preference and history, and a strict attention to data hygiene and legal practices. Ensure that you’re on the right side of the law when it comes to data collection and storage, and seek out advice from experienced professionals with a track record of legal matter management. The penalties and the damage to your professional reputation can be majorly severe if you get this wrong, so make it a matter of good practice.

Use Segmentation Effectively

Taking action on your data should all be driven by customer segmentation. Not only understanding your customers and their different backgrounds and preferences, but even allocating groups a persona to bring their journey to life and help you see how better to help them. Your knowledge of the goals set out in your business plan should guide which group of customers you look at first, but try to use the data you request to enhance your understanding of each group. This approach allows you to dig a lot deeper and come up with far more creative solutions.

Remember To Add Context

Data is never an island, and if you insist at looking at very narrow ranges of statistics in isolation, the picture that emerges is hopelessly skewed and will never give you an accurate base to work from. A better understanding of context can help you to make much more informed decisions. Make the connection between the figures you’re seeing and what they really mean for your business. Interpreting data badly can be very harmful to your operations and in many cases it would have been better not to collect it at all!

Pull Together Your Optimisation Plan

With the insights you have managed to gather, putting them into some form of actionable plan is the most important part. Six Sigma has a particularly useful concept which can be directly applied to using data insights in this way. The Define Measure Analyse Improve or DMAIC process can be very instrumental in shaping your approach. First, you define the problem that you are trying to solve, known as your hypothesis, set out your relevant stakeholders and the scope of your analysis. Then, you can measure the relevant data fields and use basic analysis to spot any anomalies. The third step is to analyse correlations and patterns within your data set using your visualisation skills to bring it to life. Improvement then corms from using these insights and coming up with a few options to explore. Finally, you control the change by using strategies like multivariate testing and monitoring KPIs to see the impact of what you’re doing. It’s then possible to make responsive adjustments in real time to ensure that your campaigns are fluid and provide a shifting technique to overcome any barriers and generate the best possible return on investment. With a little more careful planning the feeling of being overrun by statistics will be replaced by a focus on only the most relevant metrics to get you to where you need to be.