In today's highly competitive marketplace, small businesses that are serious about growth need to focus on digital transformation. Every small business, regardless of its industry, can benefit from leveraging digital technologies to deliver innovative products and services while serving its customers in the best way possible.
In this article, we’ll explain digital transformation and what it means for small businesses, why it is important, and how to implement it for your small business.
We’ll also show you the various ways digital transformation can benefit your business with examples and use cases across various departments.
What is digital transformation for business?
When many people think of digital transformation, they think of it as the process of adding new digital tools to improve their current workflows. This is a very limited outlook on digital transformation. Digital transformation is the integration of technology into different areas of a business to change how you operate and deliver value to customers.
More than just acquiring new technology, digital transformation requires a change of mindset regarding how your company functions. It involves a foundational change in how you make use of technology, personnel, and processes to improve business performance and increase value to customers.
Organizations that have successfully implemented a digital transformation strategy often gain a competitive advantage over other businesses in their industry and enjoy long-term success.
Why is digital transformation important for small businesses?
According to one survey [1], more than 90% of organizations have some form of ongoing digital initiative.
While moving forward digitally is often more prioritized by larger organizations, mid-sized and small businesses can also leverage technology to improve their quality of service, grow revenue, and serve their customers better. The benefits of Digital Transformation in an organization are many but it is a must to know the importance of digitizing internal operations.
The following are some of the reasons why digital transformation is particularly important for small businesses:
1. Improves operational efficiency
Improving operational efficiency is one of the core goals of digital transformation. This is particularly important for small businesses with limited personal and technology capabilities. Digital transformation digitizes core business processes, helping employees complete tasks faster and more effectively. It also helps you to manage tasks better and improves employee collaboration.
2. Automate processes to enhance accuracy
Digital transformation introduces digital business tools that help you set tedious and repetitive processes on autopilot. Automating your processes this way ensures that you get things done faster. Reducing the human element from everyday tasks this way also reduces error and improves the accuracy of processes. Some common candidates for automation for small businesses include inventories, collecting and updating customer data, marketing campaigns, approvals, employee data management, and so on.
3. Fulfill customer expectations
Every business serious about growth has to put a lot of effort into fulfilling customer expectations. Ultimately, digital transformation facilitates this by introducing the latest features and technologies that help you meet the needs of customers better. Digital transformation creates sustainable business culture and an effective organizational system that delivers what your customer wants in the most efficient way possible. This is much needed in today’s highly competitive business world.
4. Saving time and money
As a small business, you need to save every penny you can get so you can invest in important things. Digitalization helps you achieve this in various ways. For instance, moving your operations to the cloud saves you the cost of installing and maintaining expensive physical infrastructure. Digital transformation also helps you to adopt strategies that save you time and money.
How digital transformation can be implemented?
The process of implementing digital transformation varies from one company to the other. That’s because it has to be aligned with the unique goals, objectives, and values of your company.
While there’s no one-size-fits-all approach, there are some basic elements that you have to consider in implementing digital transformation in every organization.
Skilled people
While many people like to think of digital transformation as a tech-driven revolution, achieving your digital transformation is highly dependent on the set of skills and talents you have in your company. One of the first steps is to take stock of the skills you have available and identify which ones are missing.
Plugging the skills gap does not always mean that you have to hire new people or increase the size of your tech team. Instead, many companies implement company-wide digital skills training and leverage easy-to-use no-code platforms that require no tech expertise to facilitate digital transformation.
Strategy
Companies that are working on implementing digital transformation need to come up with a comprehensive strategy to transform and optimize standard processes. This often involves taking stock of processes and identifying areas where a digital change can cause significant improvement. It is important to note that a digital transformation strategy is not static. It often requires a constant reassessment of processes through the different phases of transformation.
Technology
Scouting for suitable technological enhancement to improve your processes and overall value delivery system is a core part of digital transformation. How this is done often depends on the maturity of your company.
Most companies in today’s business world have some type of digital tools they already use for managing processes. Implementing a technological transformation begins with assessing what is already there and determining the areas that require improvement.
Time
While rapid evolution is needed for companies to compete and survive in today’s constantly evolving business world, digital transformation is not a “big-bang” kind of change. Instead, digital transformation strategies are meant to be implemented incrementally. It should include a series of gradual actions aimed at improving processes and systems while reducing business risks and costs.
Budget
Global spending on Digital Transformation [2] is expected to hit $1.8 trillion by the end of 2022. Experts also predict that it will increase to $2.8 trillion by 2025. Digital transformation is a major cost center and you have to set aside a significant amount of money to achieve innovation. However, this has to be carefully planned and implemented to achieve real and significant change with guaranteed ROI.
Digital transformation in action
Whether you’re a small business that’s just starting or you have been in business for a long time, there are several areas of business where digital change will be very impactful for your organization. The following are some of the common use cases of digital transformation across different departments.
Customer experience and service
Digital analytics tools help businesses to build a richer experience and forge deeper relationships with their audience based on insightful data. The use of digital tools also improves interaction with customers across different channels.
Cloud transformation
Cloud transformation helps businesses migrate their information systems from legacy systems to the cloud. This can take different shapes and forms depending on the size and scope of an organization’s current infrastructure. Adopting cloud innovation like this offers a wide range of benefits in terms of flexibility, scalability, and efficiency.
Internal collaboration
Collaboration tools such as messaging platforms and online task management can go a long way in boosting the efficiency of internal processes. With your team and stakeholders unified
Within a single platform, the productivity of employees is greatly improved.
Digital communication
Gone are the days when organizations relied on emails and manual memos to communicate within teams. Digital communication channels facilitate improved and more efficient communication. It also leaves a record trail that is easier to trace and manage.
Data management
There are various digital tools that can help you manage data better and more effectively. Business data can be everything from inventories, to customer information or employee data. Digital transformation can improve the process of collecting and making use of this data for your business.
You can also take a look at some of the examples of digital transformation initiatives done by Kissflow in popular brands. Digitizing internal operations with Kissflow saved a lot of time and money.
How does digital transformation drive business growth?
In today’s digital age, growth is mostly powered by technology. However, technology itself is rapidly evolving, meaning organizations with the best and the latest technology stack often have an edge over their less-equipped competitors.
Digital transformation helps small businesses keep up with the latest technological trends to improve their operational efficiency. At the end of the day, this drives growth and gives them a competitive edge.
The following are some of the ways digital transformation drives business growth.
Customer-centricity
Today’s customers want businesses that can meet their unique needs and deliver the solutions they need as quickly and efficiently as possible. Improved customer experience is one of the primary goals of digital transformation. Introducing customer-centric digital offerings such as chatbots to improve customer service or analytics tools to better understand customers gives small businesses a competitive edge and helps them to stand out.
Better use of data
One of the results of going digital is that there’s more data to track and analyze for every digitized process. Understanding the data behind different business workflows can help you discover how these processes impact the growth of your business. This simplifies decision-making for your small business, ensuring you’re making the most impactful decision possible.
Cost savings
Manual processes and legacy systems generate costs that can be reduced significantly through digitalization. By rethinking processes and introducing relevant IT solutions, you get to cut operational costs and improve profitability in the long run.
Increased agility and innovation
Implementing digital solutions improves the agility and adaptability of your small business. It gives businesses an improved capacity to adapt in response to changes in different market factors. Companies that can innovate rapidly are better positioned to get ahead in their industry. Disruptive businesses are born out of a digital innovation culture. Regardless of their size, flexible digitally-charged companies like this are better positioned to compete in today’s fast-changing world.
Digital skills and know-how
Digital transformation is aimed at identifying skills gaps and plugging them to drive growth.
Small businesses that are serious about digital transformation often invest in employee skill development and equip them with low-code and no-code tools that are flexible and easy to use. This in turn drives growth and improves efficiency.
Better employee experience
The “people” aspect of digital transformation is just as important as the tech and business sides. Digital transformation introduces an overall change in a work culture that improves employee satisfaction quite significantly. Automating processes and boosting collaboration also afford employees more time and energy to focus on productive activities instead of mundane and repetitive ones.
Business transformation solutions with Kissflow
Although a digital transformation platform is more than just adding new software to your existing infrastructure, technology is still an important part of the process. Choosing the right platform to power your digital transformation efforts is an essential part of any digital transformation strategy.
Kissflow can help make your digital transformation process a lot easier by simplifying work management. With Kissflow, you can add new processes and introduce improvements to legacy systems in dire need of an upgrade.
Kissflow offers the best digital transformation tools to facilitate true business transformation. With automated tasks, low-code and no-code app development, digital workflow management, case management, and easy integrations with other digital tools, it’s the perfect platform to transform your work.
Read More on Digital Transformation:
1. 32+ Digital Transformation Statistics to know in 2023
2. How To find the Best Digital Transformation Companies for your business?
3. Digital Transformation services and solutions for your business
4. What are the stages of Digital Transformation?
5. Barriers to Digital Transformation and How to Overcome?
