After the arrival of the pandemic in 2020, companies had to seek measures to continue operating with employees away from their physical facilities. They found themselves in the need to adopt new digital tools to perform tasks remotely and continue with their usual operations. . It is needless to say that COVID-19 accelerated the digital transformation of many businesses, who realized that with this new work model, employees could remain functional and, in many cases, more profitable than having them physically seated in their office positions..

What is digital transformation?

We can say that digital transformation is the process of changing or replacing manual actions or tasks of the company by integrating digital technology to improve the internal efficiency of the organization, allowing for a more competitive and relevant business.

Why is digital transformation important for a company?

Digital transformation not only involves a change in the way of doing things, but also in the way of thinking. It is about carefully examining all existing tasks and processes and seeking new ways to optimize them with available technologies. The goal is to adapt manual processes to the options offered by new technologies to achieve more precise and efficient management, benefiting both employees, by removing work that can be optimized, and customers, who can be offered a better service experience.

According to some studies, in 2020, 20 million online buyers were added in Latin America. This means that technology has captured an audience that was still captive to offline shopping, as they needed to change their buying parameters and adopted new ways of doing things online. This has led companies to be where their customers are, and if they move, we must move with them.

What options do companies have today?

COVID-19 sped up digital transformation for many businesses, proving that remote work could be even more profitable than in-person office setups.

Every year, companies allocate their budgets for the operations of all departments, and interestingly, the technology areas receive the largest share of the pie. However, as Deloitte Insights Magazine explains, the majority of this budget is invested in maintaining existing technologies and not in innovation. Deloitte Insights Magazine

The challenge is to know how to direct those budgets and distribute them equitably, both in maintenance and innovation. Digital transformation has allowed for the creation of new ways of doing business virtually, and many of the systems targeted by these budgets are old or becoming outdated. Ideally, they should be replaced with modern solutions that cover more important areas of the company.

This is not a new topic; leaders are aware of it, and that is why many companies are reinventing their operations from scratch, bringing innovation and digital transformation, as new technologies have enabled emerging small digital businesses to capture part of the market that large organizations had captive.

5 advantages brought by digital transformation to companies

Digital transformation brings many advantages, in this article we will mention 5 of them.

1. Operational efficiency: digital transformation helps automate manual processes, reduce errors and improve productivity.
2. Competitive advantage: companies that adapt to digital transformation can gain a competitive advantage in the market, allowing them to differentiate themselves from their competition and expand their business, generating greater profits.
3. Reaching new customers: companies can expand their online presence and reach new customers that they would not be able to reach otherwise. By using digital tools, social networks, search engines to reach more prospects and increase the reach of the business, create apps, websites, among other tools to be within reach of customers.
4. Improving the customer experience: offering personalized customer experience and improving interaction with customers. By knowing users’ data, we can personalize the information we deliver to them and provide valuable content that is actually useful to them. An example of this is chatbots, which are there to offer support to users at all times, every day.
5. Facilitates decision making: if the company has its operations data digitalized, it allows them to analyze in real-time if their strategies are being effective, helping them to make more accurate decisions or change them if necessary.

For 2023, it is expected that 60% of companies will invest in digital transformation and by 2025, these investments could increase to 2.8 trillion dollars.

Do you need to innovate in your business? We are here to help, let’s talk.

Reference: Digital Adaptation Report.