Digital Technologies and Social Media are taking over our lives. The way we see, act, live and react is constantly changing, and our everyday is now effected by technology more than ever. The main purpose of Technology has always been to make our lives easier and simpler and now we are right on the verge where the world as we know it is reshaping and becoming Digital. The new Digital world has new rules and certain actions that must be made in order to adapt to it, and one thing that is for sure is that it is also changing the way business is conducted. Therefore companies should embrace the new digital era and get on the train of what is called Digital Transformation. The Why? the What? And The How? Of Digital Transformation is what we are about to explore next.

What is Digital Transformation?

By using the term Digital Transformation we refer to all those changes that a company follows in order to implement and apply the use of digital technologies and media. In simple words Digital Transformation is the process a company undergoes when it turns its  offline processes into digital processes and starts taking advantage of digital tools such as CRM applications, Digital Marketing etc.

What do we already know about Digital Transformation?

To get a more complete image of what digital transformation is and why it is so important for business, here are some facts that will help you understand better:

• 9 out of 10 companies believe Digital Technologies will disrupt their industry but less than half of them have set a strategy or are prepared to undergo such a transformation.
• 1 out of 3 Senior Marketing Leader in emerging markets believe that in the next five years their company will be known as a digital enterprise.
• Digital Transformation is being rated as “a matter of survival” by 30% of Senior Executives across all industries.
• More than 70% of companies that undergo digital transformation admit they attract new talent based on their use of digital.
• More than 50% of Senior Executives believe that it is of critical importance to implement Digital Transformation in the next year.
• According to 1/3 of CMO’s in the next five years Digital Marketing will account for 75% of their spending budget.
• Only 15% of Marketeers believe that their companies deliver the customer experience their brand promises, and insist that Digital Transformation can improve this dramatically.

How is Digital Transformation Implemented?

There are various steps a company must follow in order to apply and implement Digital Transformation but every situation must be treated individually and the solutions provided must be tailor made and personalised to each company’s needs. There are some key elements though that can help companies get a good start on Digital Transformation and those are:

Vision: it is of mass importance that companies know where they want to go and what they want to achieve with Digital Transformation, therefore vision is a very element they have to develop first if they want to make such an investment.

Digital Customer Experience: Always keep in mind that the main reason to apply Digital Transformation is for delivering better customer experience first and then optimising internal processes, therefore to begin with, companies should focus on designing excellent digital customer experience.

The Digital Transformation Team: Digital Transformation is a very important, quite expensive and time consuming process that runs across all the departments of a company and through all internal processes, deeply analysing them and changing many of them using digital tools in order to optimise them. That is why companies should first focus on assembling the right team of experts that can successfully complete this project instead of anything else.

As you can probably understand by now Digital Technologies and Media are now defining the future of business, and already many executives talk about the importance of digital transformation and advise companies to apply it. So the best thing for your company is to think smart and take advantage of this new business trend before it is too late.