Digital Transformation Best Practices

The government of Australia has already outlined a number of initiatives, related to digital transformation, in the Budget 2017-18, stating that they are working to modernize and consolidate their systems, also training their staff members in various digital skills. Being the key solution to adopt advancements of technology, digital transformation, and its proper implementation, are crucial for existing businesses in Australia.

See also: AI Technology and Customer Service 

With the advancement of consumer technology, there is also a transformation of the various ways in which a consumer explores, discovers, buys or engages with your services and products, allowing them to shift their behavior from traditional boundaries.

The Most Effective Digital TransformationPractices

1. Create an Exceptional Digital Team

The most effective practice for digital transformation is to build a high performance and efficient digital team. To utilize the team purposefully, management must strive to make a team of individuals with varied backgrounds. This makes them a dynamic team that is well equipped to lead in the digital world.

exceptional digital marketing team

To be more precise, these individuals know how to deal with the odds and be comfortable with the uncomfortable business situations, ensuring a consistent journey towards digital transformation. It is important for a digital team to keep the mindset of experimentation. This in turn, significantly helps in shifting the mindset of the whole organization in lesser time and more efficiently.

2. Follow through with the Shared Vision

Digital transformation must be a shared vision to reach a favorable outcome. In this way, an organization can achieve the complete transformation with successful implementation through the organizational structure, by means of a series of projects and different combinations of new initiatives.

This practice brings a lot of responsibility for the management in terms of bringing the people together, creating and clearly communicating a shared vision, convincing people to strive hard for that vision and to work mutually and collectively, to not only figure out the approach but to ensure its attainment.

3. Thinking from the Outside-In

To adopt and implement digital transformation, the best practice is to build the culture of thinking from the outside-in i.e. from the perspective of the consumer experience. To keep it more accurate, make a good combination of analytics and user experience that will help in driving the consumer-oriented strategy. The most important factor is to prevent a fall to the level where it fails to meet the expectations of the end consumer.

The process of changing the existing working patterns of an organization requires efforts in the right direction. Expanding an existing platform of an organization may demand contributions and acceptance of changes organization-wide. To keep efforts in the right direction, the first thing is to do only what is truly required and not being done for the sake of digital transformation.

4. Analytical and Experimental

There is no right way to attain digital transformation. This extensive transformation requires hours of experimentation, and accurate analytical thinking, before reaching the desired outcome. Become experimental and analytical, and try something outside the box – an initiative, which will help in opening new and better ways to measure the performance immediately. While planning has its own importance in digitally transforming an organization’s culture, the best practice is to think and implement it in shorter cycles and to apply the information and strategies accurately.

5 Marketing Automation Strategies to Increase Profits

While the concept of automation has been around since the beginning of the industrial age, its presence in today’s economy seems to be growing at record speeds. New technologies, combined with a better understanding of how they work, have allowed business of all types to grow in ways previously thought impossible.

marketing automation strategy business charts

One of the more recent developments in automation is its application in marketing. The emergence of Big Data, and the expansion of internet and smartphone use, means marketers now have their hands on a tremendous amount of information they can use to more effectively reach their target market.

However, as with any technological advance, just using it doesn’t automatically translate into results. You have to have the right strategy.

Marketing automation is all the rage right now, and here are five strategies to make it work for you.

Lead Identification

One of the most frequent debates that goes on between sales and marketing departments is what constitutes a quality lead. Differing opinions not only slow down the process, but they also can lead a salesperson to go after a lead that doesn’t really have much promise. One of the best marketing automation strategies you can pursue is one of lead identification. It uses data to help eliminate the guesswork ,giving sales team better leads to pursue.

The first step in this strategy is to automate data collection, as this will allow you to figure out exactly who is coming to your site. But more importantly, it will give you a chance to learn who is engaging with the content you produce. You can track clicks, time on page, downloads, etc. (using tools such as Google Analytics and UI parameters) and this will help you figure out which part of your target audience is responding most to your tactics.

Another great way to identify leads using automation is through subscriptions. Work with your web developer to have a subscription box pop up after people have spent a certain amount of time on the site. Signing up demonstrate affinity, meaning sales tactics will likely be more effective won these individuals. Implement these simple automation and use them to help make your sales efforts far more effective.

Lead Nurturing

The second strategy to pursue is lead nurturing. It’s one thing to identify good leads, but you need to manage them properly to be able to turn them into sales; even the best leads don’t all convert into sales.

The secret to this strategy is drip emails. These are emails that go out gradually (as if they were dripping) to confirmed leads. And they’re really easy to automate. You start by writing out the content of the emails, and then you set your system up to send different emails at different intervals. You could manage this manually, but you’d likely go insane trying to keep track of everything. By setting it up to work automatically, you can sit back and let the emails do the work for you.

And there’s quite a bit of evidence to suggest these types of campaigns work. In fact, one study found that every $1 invested in an email campaigns produces a return of $38. It’s tough to beat those kinds of results, and they’re really only attainable with an automated lead nurturing campaign.

There are a variety of different software options out there that can help you nurture leads, the most common and effective being Drip, ConvertKit, Vero and Mailchimp.

Brand Management and Engagement

Building and maintaining a brand is one of the key functions of a marketing department. And it requires a multifaceted approach across many different platforms. But it’s hard to beat the effectiveness of social media in building a brand. People use these platforms to stay in touch with those they care about, so being in on these conversations can only help your brand.

Actually doing this, though, can be a nightmare. Between all the different platforms, there’s far too much for any one person to do. The answer: automate. Platforms such as Hootsuite allow you to set up your social media posts in advance, meaning you can front load all the work and then only respond when needed. The software will alert you when someone has commented on a post or reached out to, and then you can respond directly to that comment, saving you from having to comb through all the content on your various accounts.

Furthermore, these services will help track engagement. They’ll bundle information about likes retweets, shares, etc., and this will let you know what’s working well and what’s not, allowing you to refine your campaigns and increase their effectiveness in helping you build your brand.

Customer Service

To stay competitive in today’s market, you must deliver top-notch customer service. While traditionally thought of as separate from marketing, nowadays both functions are closely connected. This bond has formed largely because of the information you can gather from your customer service efforts, and also because you can use customer service as another means of dealing with people.

The primary tool for automating customer service is a chatbot. These are a wonderful way to break the ice with people and make your site, company and brand seem more human. Offering to help people find something, or pointing them in the right direction when they land on you site, can go a long way towards helping to improve the customer experience and promote sales.

But chatbots can go one step further. Because they’re automated, they can collect and compile data that will help you understand your audience even more. They can identify frequent issues, and they can also help you learn more about what people come searching for when they land on your site. And all this means you can tailor your content to better meet the needs of your audience, increasing the chances you’ll connect with them and convert them into customers.

Tailored Content

Successful marketing campaigns speak directly to your target audience. They start by identifying the needs and expectations of a certain group, and they end by connecting with these people and convincing them to take an action, such as making a purchase or signing up for your newsletter. And the secret to doing this is to segment your audiences and deliver content that is directly relevant to them.

tailored content marketing automation strategy

For example, let’s say you’re a B2B business offering employment services or management consulting. Your goal as a company is to help people streamline their HR operations. As such, your audience is going to be people working in HR, as well as divisional managers responsible for making decisions about the business, as these are the people who will ultimately decide whether or not to hire you. And although these two groups are part of the same audience, the content you send to them must be different for it to be effective.

The secret to this is using an automated CRM software. It will help compile information about your many different audience segments, allowing you to create a distribute content tailored specifically for each group. For example, HR generalists may receive information about how to streamline the on-boarding process, whereas HR managers will receive content about how a (PEO) can save the company time, money and resources. It makes sense this kind of segmentation would work, and studies help back up this logic, indicating a 62 percent improvement in email campaign effectiveness with this type of tailored content.

Use Automation the Right Way

Automating marketing tasks presents an incredible opportunity to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your marketing operation. However, for it to work, you need to have a good strategy. The five discussed here are some of the most effective known to date, so give them a try and watch as your marketing efforts produce better leads and drive higher sales figures now and into the future.

 

About the Author 

Jock works with investors and business owners to help people maximize the value of their business. Professionally, he is an expert in high-growth internet companies, having bought, built and sold three different businesses throughout his career. He is currently the CEO of Digitalexits.com.

Digital Transformation – Where to Start

Whatever the size of your organisation, you can always rely on digital transformation to turn the tables and change the game for your business. Every major company wants to achieve digital transformation, but it isn’t easy to acquire which is why so many businesses are looking for templates.

There is nothing more frustrating than failing at digital transformation, since that means valuable loss of time and resources. It is also a major setback for the organisation because it has to restart again after accounting for heavy losses.

The fear of losing out or failing at digital transformation is one of the main reasons why so many businesses decide to remain out of the game. However, there are ways you can counter that, which can only be done through digital transformation templates. The important thing is finding templates that have been proven to give results, and once you find templates you can rely on, things will become easier for you in the long-run. To help you achieve digital transformation success, we are going to be sharing digital transformation templates that you can rely on.

Where to Start Digital Transformationdigital-transformation-how-to

Getting ahead of your Competition

The main reason digital transformation is so important is so that you can overtake your competition, and that is what this template is based on. Success in digital transformation can only be achieved if you remove the fear of losing out of your competition. If that is the sole focus of your organization, you will never be able to achieve digital transformation, because it is much more than just beating your competition.

You need to expand your business operations to more than just competing with your competitors. For most businesses that is the definition of getting ahead of their competition. To do that, you need to adopt strategies that no one else has ever thought about, which means leading from the front. Xero created a very handy checklist which you can use before you proceed https://www.xero.com/content/dam/xero/pdf/Startup-guides/Digital-Transformation-checklist-Xero-TradeGecko.pdf

Engaging Customers

If you don’t understand your target audience, you will struggle to really provide them with services they appreciate, and as a result, you will lose out on potential income.

Engaging customers is the key to digital transformation because you need to design your organisation around your clients. Any business that places the needs of their customers over their own is going to see success, but you shouldn’t limit that to profits only.

Achieving digital transformation is difficult, but it is easier to implement if you are engaged with your customers. It will not only help you identify the key areas where you need to improve, but how you can bring value into the lives of your customers.

Adopt Automation

digital-transformation-aligning-goals-vision

One of the main reasons most businesses struggle with digital transformation is because they haven’t thought about automation for their business. You will not be able to adopt technological advancements if you don’t have any automation at all in your business operations. It will be a pointless exercise, which will be far removed from the culture of your organisation.

Therefore, it is smart to incorporate automation into the organisation at every level, so that you are able to introduce digital transformation practices that will eventually take the business onto the next level.

Make sure that you remove old processes in favor of new ones, and make sure that everyone in the organisation is comfortable with automation. You need to have everyone onboard because it will require a team effort. Therefore, you should train everyone in your organisation to learn about the latest digital marketing trends in the industry. It will help them become more comfortable with technology, and will ensure successful digital transformation for you.

Have Clear Objectives about the Business

Another thing that you will need to identify to ensure digital transformation success is having clear objectives about the business and its direction. Once you know what direction the business needs to take, you will be able to easily come out with strategies that are aligned with your digital transformation. There is no point in adopting digital strategies if that is not where you see business heading in the future. Any business that doesn’t commit to digital transformation will struggle to see results, because if you don’t plan on becoming the market leader in technology, then you won’t see much results.

That is why a digital transformation audit is necessary, because it helps iron out a clear path or direction for the business. It helps businesses realise what needs to be done for them to achieve complete digital transformation. Having clear objectives also helps the business in their daily operations, because they can easily incorporate measures that are targeted towards their success. That’s why it is important that you understand digital transformation, and the many templates that you can rely on to achieve that. Michael Connor wrote up a great article many years back which is still applicable today http://www.creatinginsanelygreat.com/digital-transformation-plan-preflight-checklist-ready-for-takeoff/

How to Ensure Your Organization is Ready for Digital Transformation

Digital information focuses the enterprise to get closer to the right technology, and understanding what no longer works for your organization needs to be replaced or upgraded. It is a process for management to rigorously measure performance and embrace advancement in technology, to create impactful results in your organization. I decided to write this as a short checklist to consider the three main bottlenecks of processes and communication I encountered when undertaking digital transformation projects.

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In an organization, opting for and establishing new technological advancements, outlining a new digital roadmap, creating an innovative vision strategy and a smooth execution of these transformations is extremely challenging.

Why is this all Important?

To compete in the world’s economy, and to get familiar with new innovative technology, management of many enterprises, especially start ups in Australia, are constantly shifting their efforts in a new direction to become visionaries and leaders in their industries. Almost all business regulations, processes, and functions can be transformed with digital technology. The Government of Australia has outlined a number of initiatives for digital transformation in the Budget 2017-18, stating that they will consolidate and modernize their systems along with members of training staff in digital skills. Governments are usually slow to adopt new technology, so has your organisation transformed digitally?

Does your Organization need to Adopt?

digital-transformation-adopt

Unless any organization or let’s say, a start up in Australia, is really at its peak, the answer remains “Yes”. Regardless of the operating industry, the management cannot turn a blind eye to digital transformation, if the management and the enterprise lack vision, has no understanding of its customer, has poor employee engagement, is operating on outdated technology systems and is unable to deliver excellence and innovation in their services and products, amazing results cannot be achieved.

It is nonetheless, naive to expect an organization to spontaneously and suddenly transform itself especially when it relies on the old and comfortable ways of working. The Digital Transformation Agency worked towards the transformation of the Australian government for more than 16 months and there are still many more years ahead of it to achieve it’s agendas https://www.dta.gov.au/news/all/

While the majority of organizations and managements think of digital transformation as changing the technical aspect of business, which is quite right in its sense, all the focus on installing advanced technology and modern systems, signing up and shifting to cloud based technology and diversifying the services and functions of IT within the business, can all fail dramatically if you do not execute the transformation correctly.

1. Digital Transformation begins with the staff

digital-transformation-people

According to the Canon research, 78% of the businesses state that they are willing to improve the management and employee experience by adopting digital transformation – this is in contrast to the 55% of businesses which opted to focus on customer experience instead. 

Employees are a critical part of the digital transformation process – if employees are not on board, it is undeniably impossible to shift the organization’s practices and processes. A vast majority of the businesses feel that change of management is a huge barrier to digital transformation. Moreover, successful changes depend on employee experience.

Nitya Padmon – Customer Marketing Head – Canon Australia says that the observed impact on employee experience is due to businesses realizing the need for digital transformation. They understand the need of transforming the workflows and processes if they intend to retain and attract young expertise.

2. Digital Transformation from Top to bottom

“The big difference between the companies that are just doing technology initiatives and the companies that are leading a technology-based transformation is how they’re putting the leadership frameworks in place,” MIT’s George Westerman.

In spite of the role employees play in the digital transformation of a business in Australia, CEOs have the same role in shifting and driving this change successfully. However, as per the survey of MIT, only half of the organizations create cases to facilitate digital investment. Hence, transformation flows from top to bottom in the organizational structure and as a part of a comprehensive business strategy.

Set an innovative platform and keep holistic view for technology

The landscape of digital transformation is in its infancy indeed. No matter how much we defy our current practices as being the most suitable ones for tomorrow as well, it is not the case. Set up your transformational project with continual development and change in mind and eradicate the processes that are lagging behind the modern world.

Since digital transformation will take over all aspects of business growth and success, it is right for a management to lead at the front-end in order to cultivate a digital culture founded on the grounds of consistent change and innovation.

3. Get along with the other platforms to optimize business

digital-transformation-platforms

Unlike the conventional approach of management, there is a demand for digitally transforming businesses to use various advanced platforms to optimize business growth. Instead of developing custom solutions, depending on reasons such as security issues or to have a belief that these solutions will help in ensuring a competitive edge, it is time to reconsider your options and make use of modern processes innovatively. Create a solid relationship with a digital solutions provider and help your organization in keeping a steady track of business growth.

Ending Note

Ultimately, ensuring the start of digital transformation in your organization is by creating meaningful metrics, having tangible benchmarks and ensuring clear communication of the expected progress.

Digital Transformation Trends 2017

In previous years, we observed a lot of disruptive trends, both globally and locally. One of these was the outburst of start-ups that continued pitching all aspects of technology to private and public enterprises. These pitches ranged from the platforms of digital technology to machine learning, especially Artificial intelligence. In the context of enterprises, there is a significant shift of attention as the traditional business managements are engaging with recent trends of transformation strategies along with emerging service and tech players, that immensely helps in delivering that transformation, actively.

Digital transformation is basically the application of innovative digital technologies to impact, all aspects of society and business fundamentally.

For Australian tech start ups, this is undoubtedly a golden opportunity, especially if they are ready to handle the solutions at the enterprise-scale. So what is really driving this huge shift? In our experience, engaging with digital transformation such as the emerging cloud technology, is at the heart of this. While these shifts in the management approach and digital technology are transforming the activities of many businesses and organisations across Australia, the economy of these business are more focused on shifting the ‘cost saving’ approach with a more ‘revenue generating’ one, as a quick win.

During 2017, the investment in terms of innovation is becoming more routine – something that is more than just the mere status of being a part of the world of digital transformation.

“This is the year we’ll see Chief Customer Officers become commonplace.” Philip Otley, Partner, the Experience Centre, Sydney

The emerging trends of digital transformation in 2017While, for management in 2017, it will become imperative to raise the proficiency of their employees to cope up with the diversity of digital information, they need to be trained on the ethical implications of these digital technologies, which are now fuelling the business expansion, in Australia. If your enterprise hasn’t dug deeper into innovation of digital technology, it might lose its existence.

In 2017, we see three fundamental trends of digital technology that are emerging in the Australian market and globally, in the years ahead:

The Integration of New Reality for Enterprises – Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality (AR), Mixed Reality (MR) and Virtual Reality (VR) are now shifting from the consumer and gaming domain to the organisational level at a rapid rate. The leading enterprises are embracing these technologies in developing processes and improving collaborations, enabling better engagement of their employees, with the customer base.

To be prepared to manage the future workforce, in 2017, enterprises are incorporating and experimenting more with virtual, mixed and augmented reality technology. For instance, AR allows people to make use of virtual guidance or step-by-step assistance, let’s say, in installing or repairing an equipment, to successfully complete the job through limiting risks and maximising productivity. Look at the changes occurring with augmented reality in healthcare, education, retail, finance and marketing. The future of digital innovation lies in the augmentation of the human experience In 2017, we have started seeing organisations leveraging on the digital world in order to drive fundamental change in their user experiences. As both employees and customers are increasingly becoming digital savvy, management needs to reconsider conventional design thinking, to maintain and establish a competitive advantage.

Design Thinking

human-experience-design-thinking

Design thinking first visualises the end experience, then synthesise processes, people, and technology to achieve the vision, together.

In the world of developing digital transformation, tapping and typing are no longer de facto interactions. Instead there will be more covering gestures, immersive experiences, haptics, gaze, voice and so on, and a seamless and smooth engagement between machines and users.

“A shortage of digital talent in the market will see organizations attempt to digitize their existing employees.”

Berry Driessen, Director, the Experience Centre, Melbourne

Furthermore, with more embracing of design thinking by organisations in Australia and globally, the digital humanist role will gain more prominence. Demonstrating creativity, empathy, agile and collaborative approach, more employee expectations and an ethical customer will be advocated, in digital innovation, by the digital humanist.

These advocacies will subsequently, span design and user experience, but along with new technology innovation ethics.

Cloud-based Workspace is at the base of Digital Transformation

The most fundamental aspect of digital transformation is nonetheless cloud. While this equally holds true for management in workspaces, even personal work is drastically shifting to the cloud, giving you all round accessibility anywhere and anytime via a browser. Eventually, there will be no more rigidly located workspaces or digital interaction.

No matter what working aspects, location, and devices you use, digital transformation in the form of the cloud have taken over the digital world. The Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Data bricks and IBM clouds offer APIs which give the analyst a lot of control.

As such, digital transformation is the pathway to fulfilling the Science Agenda and National Innovation; Australia’s structured strategy to raise the competitiveness in the world’s economy.

Lessons CIOs Can Learn from Great Transformation Projects

Are you part of a group of senior managers who think that the competitiveness of their organisation will be compromised if they adopt digitalisation? The CIO is the Chief Information Officer in an organisation and is a crucial part of management since (s)he oversees handling all the information of the company. It’s imperative that this person be open to learning because most businesses today are facing problems in their day-to-day business operations because they are hesitant to adopt digital trends.

They don’t see digital transformation as something that is revolutionary, which is the wrong attitude to have because it is well know that digital transformation can take businesses to the next level. However, to ensure success for the business, digital transformation projects need to be handled properly and that is why the role of the CIO is so important. Let’s learn more about the role of the CIO in driving digital transformation to give you a better idea.

The role the CIO plays in Digital Transformation

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As the person in charge of handling all the important operations of the business, it is your duty to ensure that the organisation is adopting the best technology. You will be the person who must take charge of handling the digital distribution within the business, and this is where adopting digital technology can help you out. As the person in charge of handling and distributing information, you need to ensure that you are delivering accurate and timely information to all the decision makers in the organisation.

This means that you will need to look at the existing infrastructure in place in your organisation and take charge of the day-to-day business practices that take place in the organisation. If you don’t go ahead with digital transformation, you will be relying on the skills of the team around you, and that is prone to errors. All CIOs must make informed decisions, which is why we are going to be sharing the lessons CIOs can learn from great transformation projects.

All about Value

IT departments of businesses are now considered a necessity. It is crucial to the business, and isn’t considered as an additional cost, because technology plays such a massive role in the way businesses operate today. The value that great transformation projects will add to a business in terms of technological advancement and superiority is unmatched. See how QIC delivered value https://which-50.com/digital-transformation-improves-property-asset-values-qic/

Better security delivered

As a CIO, you need to ensure complete protection of all information related to your business, but that has become harder over time due to technological advancements falling into the wrong hands. Hackers have major corporations at their mercy, when they hack into their data centres, but on the other hand, great transformation projects ensure that security breaches are less common.

The security of your data centre shouldn’t take a back seat, and most CIOs have realised that great digital transformation projects can help protect valuable information and save the business embarrassment. Find out how security can deliver innovation in your digital transformation project: http://www.information-age.com/6-security-innovation-digital-transformation-123465842/

Digital is a Mindset

Digital transformation projects revolve around taking advantage of cutting-edge digital technologies, which means that they are more than just tools. Incorporating conventional digital technology to your business operations will take it to the next level and help your organisation become a leader in the digital world. It will give you an edge over your competition and ensure that you set trends that everyone in your industry follows.

CIOs have learnt from great transformation projects that the main stumbling block for digital transformation is the culture of the organisation. Therefore, CIOs must make efforts to incorporate digital technology, so that everyone appreciates and adopts it. If you want digital transformation to be successful, you need to focus on making it about a cultural change, and educate your employees about the benefits of this transformation.

Investing in your employees holds the key

There can be no doubt about the fact that if you want to achieve digital marketing success, you need to implement digital transformation in your organization. This is where CIOs need to take the lead and make sure that they invest in their employees to improve their IT skills. Organisations that lack in IT skills are going to be left behind because the rest of the world is adopting digitalisation, and if you want to become an IT leader in your industry, you need to find the resources and the skills.

Advancement in technology will only expand in the coming years, and the only way any business is going to achieve success in this climate is if they invest in their employees.

Talent in technology is not found easily in the industry, and CIOs know that they will be better served by investing in their own employees. This is a lesson that every CIO should adopt because it is going to pay dividends for years to come, and will ensure success for your organisation.

Employees that are trained and educated about the latest technology will be able to adapt it and lead great transformation projects. Learn how Adobe invested in its employees to achieve their digital transformation goals faster https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/customer-experience/digital-transformation-invest-people-get-faster/

Try This Digital Transformation Checklist, To Ensure Your Project Is Working Perfectly

A digital transformation takes a lot of hard work and you can’t expect it to happen overnight. Many businesses tend to be so rigid in their ways that they find it difficult to transition to digital media. For them, the digital transformation can be very problematic.

When you’re considering a digital transformation, don’t just consider the kind of equipment you need to make it a success, take a closer look at other aspects that align together to determine that your project is working. If you’re new to this, you can take a look at other businesses and draw inspiration from their practices to make a template that works for you.

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However, even picking your own digital template for your business is going to require focus on certain key areas. The following are a few aspects that you should consider as a part of your business’s digital transformation checklist.

Transitioning to the Cloud

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One of the biggest points of contention in digital transformation still remains the cloud. However, with better cloud services and greater security, the cloud has addressed many of the concerns that businesses previously had.

Converting to the cloud doesn’t just make your platform more secure, it allows you to streamline a lot of the project details. The best way that businesses can smooth things out is by opting for the cloud. The template on which the cloud services are provided can vary from business to business but the benefits it provides, pay off very well due to its huge flexibility.

Focusing on Customer Centricity

Most businesses are realizing the benefits of digital transformation by opting to be customer centric. This means putting the customer at the heart of your business services. For a good example of a customer centric digital transformation, take a look at Wendy’s Twitter account.

Not only does it promote their services, it also interacts with customer’s queries and complaints and more than that, it showcases a personality which appeals to the human nature of their consumers.

New Developments for the Customer

Amazon.com is another great example of customer centric digital transformation. In fact, their template has been utilized by other online stores such as eBay. A king in the e-Commerce industry, Amazon has developed their whole website along with services and other value added features, keeping the customer in mind. As a result, there are few people who can find fault with their business performances.

Enhanced Productivity

Keep the productivity of your business in mind when you’re going through a digital transformation. While digital transformation is time consuming; it doesn’t happen in a day, so it shouldn’t be disrupting your work so much that it causes a huge loss. If that happens, you need to reevaluate where it fits in with your business template. Or, you might want to reevaluate the template you’re looking to incorporate.

Understand that what works for others may not always work for you. Your business needs, goals and missions will be different in comparison to other businesses. The aim of digital transformation is to aid in streamlining all the procedures. If it is taking too much time, don’t be afraid to reconsider it.

Security

Better security is one reason why you might opt for a digital transition and it should have SSL, SaaS and SQL and other certifications in order to ensure that all users get a platform which is safe and secure. Data theft is a huge issue and running security checks on your digital platforms can help you ensure that all sensitive data shared with you stays safe.

The best part is that almost every digital transition template makes room for security and you won’t find one without it. By providing a secure platform, you can also be better armed against hackers who enjoy nothing more than bringing businesses to a standstill.

Tangible Results

When you’re using a good digital transformation system, you’ll be getting tangible results in the form of better profits, better customer retention and the ability to attract more customers too. The tangible results will also show in the form of savings. A digital transformation streamlines a lot of old, legacy procedures that would often cost a lot.

If you’re looking to save money and make your work more streamlined, pick a digital transformation template which allows you to do so. The surprising part is that you will find plenty of templates for this use.

At the end of the day, your digital transformation should be in line with your business goals. You can also choose to look at other industry giants that make use of such templates in order to gain inspiration for your own transformation. While it can be problematic and might take time, the effort is well worth the results you get from it.

Management Guide to Digital Transformation

Digital transformation is now the inevitable need of organisations, especially small start-ups in the Australian economy. Any business that strives to opt and establish new and advanced technological advancements, create an innovative vision, outline a digital roadmap, and wants to achieve maximum transformation, by adapting the digital advancements, must go through many stages to accomplish the purpose.

How successfully a business transforms its operations digitally totally depends on the organisation’s management. In digital transformation, the roles and decisions taken by management are crucial, considering the impactful change it can bring to the organisation, the intensity of disruption it can cause and also, the potential of its inertia.

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As an organisation adapts to digital transformation, it is not possible to do so without enabling new processes of working, that are implemented from the top level of the organisation to the bottom. Nevertheless, the scarcest of all resources in an organisation is not the technological advancement but the absence of strong leadership.

So what is the Right Approach?

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To create a roadmap to a digitally transformed organisation, the management must have the capability to bring in digital initiatives, manage the accelerating and existing innovation cycles and reshape the strategies of organisations around some new approaches, for instance, the agile approach.

To further guide you through this transformation; let us have a look at some of the key factors for the management to consider and implement, towards a successful digital transformation, in their organisation.

Learn from Market Leaders but stick to your DNA

Many established companies in the Australian economy are embracing the innovations that are drastically empowering the digital economy. These organisations are leading the industry by simply meeting the customer need, in some new ways, and making the most of the technological advancement.

Equally important is the fact that the leading organisations are fearless in creating new operating models and building a transformed culture. Holding on to its core strength, the management must think of ways to apply new work processes, improve the customer’s experience and bring in a new platform for technological advancement within the organisation.

Vision and Planning will provide Direction

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Plans and visions are the top critical requirement in achieving digital transformation. A vision is important to create intentions and to establish ambition and direction. On the contrary, plans lay out deliverables and responsibilities. The management however, needs to articulate a purposeful and strategic outline, along with the context for change. With that, they must remain open to feedback from employees, partners and customers. Using the approach of adaptive leadership, the management, in short, must continually adapt to changing market conditions.

Place Multiple Bets

Although the management must sketch a broader vision with improvisation, they must also use more than one approach towards digital transformation. Since the ambiguity and volatility of the market is hard to analyse, to decide what will work and which analytical and technological capability an organisation needs to acquire, there are two bets which every organisation must consider;

Open innovation: Organisations that have successfully transformed themselves participate in much broader digital initiatives, innovation and the mobile ecosystem. They step into developments beyond the existing level of organisations and let outsiders catch up with their services and products.

Portfolio Construction: When it’s about partnering, venturing and deal making, digital transformation is built on several small and manageable bets. Companies must evaluate dozens of different investments, approaches and partnerships and then scale up and build only the promising ones. However, all of these exercises must occur in the frame of overall vision.

Execute the Digital Plan

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A digital strategy is of no use in the absence of its execution. With many endeavours that an organisation makes to transform itself digitally, there are a few approaches that must stand out amongst the others. Firstly, evaluate the ways to ensure success and momentum. Ideally, the senior management drives the transformation in the organisation but start ups may need to appoint a leader who will drive and coordinate the digital activities.

Secondly, decide what needs to be centralised and what must be decentralised. The management will be required to handle the tradeoffs, between experimentation and standardisation, to create decision rights with regards to digital transformation.

Finally, the management must introduce methods of agile working in their organisation. By design, such teams are cross functional, fast and self-directed, unlike traditional managers who move ahead along the hierarchy in many steps. Similarly, the management’s role is to adapt to new behaviours and to let go of traditional habits.

Polish your Existing Talent

The management may choose to hire external talent but a promising strategy is to train the existing staff to adopt digital capabilities. This can be done by building in house digital centres or academics, and training the staff over many capabilities such as analytics or artificial intelligence along with the ways of working such as agile, which are conducive to many digital activities. After all, a digital transformation is only as effective as the people who actually execute it.

To digitise an organisation, the management first needs to transform its ways of working, broaden the vision and polish the existing talent and all of this must be done by holding on to their organisational values.

Digital Transformation Audit

When it comes to digital transformation, every intelligent business in the world wants to adopt it (if they haven’t already done so) because it allows them an easy way to measure their success. If you want to learn where you stand in your digital transformation journey, you need to take advantage of digital transformation audits. It will help you understand how far you have come, and how much further you need to go before you finally manage to achieve digital transformation success.

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Before we get to identifying digital transformation, let’s first look at what digital transformation means to businesses. Whenever we talk about digital transformation, we are looking at new business models, user or customer experiences, along with operational processes. When you combine all of them, you not only engage people, but also connect with them through different technologies. This way you can create deeper and more meaningful relationships with your customers.

Why Audit?

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When we talk about a digital transformation audit, we are discussing how far along your business has come in terms of technology and what type of digital trends you have adopted. It is basically your digital footprint, and if you are looking to compete in your industry, it is imperative you get a digital transformation audit.

Most businesses don’t understand the value in audits, but that is only because they fail to understand that knowing your weaknesses before they are exposed is a strength. It is designed to help identify key areas where a business can improve, and what they need to do to create lasting transformative changes. The entire process is complex, but you will need to adopt it if you want to survive in the economy today. A digital audit helps create a roadmap for your organisation, since it outlines where you stand, and helps you measure yourself as a digitally transformed company.

Achieving Digital Value The business world is highly competitive and therefore, you must adopt digital transformation if you want to stand apart from your competition. Once you have achieved digital superiority over your competition, you will become the leader in your industry. However, all of this requires that you achieve digital value as a brand. How do you achieve that? By conducting a digital transformation audit.

It will not only help you respond to digital disruption, but will also help you figure out effective, innovative, and transformational solutions. The digital world is always changing and the only way you will ever be able to stay ahead of the curve is through digital transformation audits.

It looks at the strengths of your organisation and any vulnerabilities that have crept into the organisation. This way you can separate the good from the bad, and achieve digital transformation easily.

Expand your Revenue Generation

When it comes to digital transformation, you will need to adopt complex IT solutions, because that is one way that you are going to bring about change in your organisation. Studies have revealed that businesses that want to dominate the IT industry needed the help of digital transformation audits, so that they have a better idea of where they stand. It helps them come out with a timeline for eradicating processes that are hampering their chances of true digital transformation.

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Helping your organisation adopt digital transformation trends is going to be hard, because change is hard and not everyone is equipped to deal with wholesale changes. To ensure that you’re on the right path, you will need to adopt digital transformation strategies that are designed according to the strengths and weaknesses of your organisation. Once your organisation has adopted the latest digital trends in the industry, you will be able to expand your revenue generation.

Dealing with Digital Performance

The one key area that a digital audit is such a huge success is in determining what kind of problems are persisting in the digital setup of an organisation. Once you go through the audit, you will have a clearer picture of where you stand, and what you need to do to achieve digital transformation independence. Once you start monitoring your own digital performance and the environment it is creating in your organisation you will be able to make changes.

Dealing with digital performance is crucial to achieving digital transformation, and this is what an audit will help identify. Most businesses are hesitant towards audits, because they don’t want an outside party going through their processes. This is understandable because no business wants their secrets and important data to fall into the wrong hands.

However, conducting a digital transformation audit has a lot of benefits for the organisation, and when it is done by professionals, you will be able to achieve exceptional performance levels. Investing in the IT of your organisation includes investing in digital transformation audits, because it is linked to the future of your business and your legacy.