Digital Transformation for Business

What is digital transformation

In order to understand what digital transformation is, we need to look at what ‘digital’ is not. Digital is not owning a digital hardware like a Tablet or Smart Phone or striving for social media likes or even taking your services to the cloud. Here we can decisively say that being Digital, if not the above mentioned, is a process that creates harmony amongst various digital platforms.

An example seems to be in order. Say a business sending the message to its sales team tells them that being ‘Digital’ refers to increasing the connectedness among people, processes and products/services so that after all is done, we can analyse the data to further create ‘value’ for our customers. Does that mean that being ‘Digital’ is all about getting the data? No, it emphasises on creating ‘value’ for the customer. A bit of inquiry is required which can lead us to find what ‘Digital Transformation’ is.

Since we have understood what being ‘Digital’ is, for a business, let us get our curiosity going as to how adding the term ‘Transformation’ could change the meaning of being ‘Digital’. An introductory brief for ‘Digital Transformation’ would be; an overall transformation of organisational activities aimed at leveraging opportunities created by advancement in Digital Technology and data. Is that ‘Digital Transformation’, one might ask. Not quite, let us put customer value into the equation and see what comes out.

It makes sense for Promot, our Digital Transformation initiative that Digital transformation could be defined as transforming how a business operates and engages with its customers by leveraging technology and data. An example in the difference of approach via Digital Transformation; Earlier, value proposition was defined by businesses and then advertised to drive sales. In the era of Digital Transformation, value proposition is defined by ‘changing customer needs’.

Would it be wrong then to inquire further whether Digital Transformation is only a technique, a process or an entire framework which should be applied to various functions of a business. We certainly think that Digital Transformation is a framework. How is it applied to various areas of business. A list would make it more understandable as to how digital transformation should be applied as a framework to business functions:

1. Business Model: Businesses today, need to re orient their strategy to transform the business model, technology and data infrastructure.

2. Technology and process: Increasing technology adoption by the new generation is changing how they discover, evaluate and purchase products/services

3. Competition: Companies are not competing inside one industry, they are competing beyond the limits of one industry to carve out new customer needs and serving them. A company competing with another company inside an industry might collaborate with their competitor in some other industry offering.

4. Culture and Mindset: Businesses who are ahead of the curve have imbibed continuous testing and experimentation. Prototypes are being created and tested with target group of customer communities to enable a rapid experimentation in ascertaining customer needs to drive their value proposition.

It is safe to conclude that a framework that combines all the above said will change the type of Digital Transformation required. Since one framework does not fit all, it should be customised as per the needs of the customer. Let us continue implementing strategies, via Digital Transformation’ in the rapidly changing world of technology with one goal in mind, enhancing the value to the customer. It is at ‘customer value’ point where traditional marketing and digital marketing converge.

Navdeep Singh Mangat (Managing Director, Promot and CEO of the holding company, Process Prism Technology Solutions Pvt Ltd)