Digital Transformation is Here. Are You Ready?
As technology continues to impact the way we conduct business, market leaders have begun to shift processes and systems to make a complete digital transformation. This transformation to a digital business world dates back as far as the 60s and 70s with the advent of microchips; continuing steadily in the decades to follow with personal computers, software, the internet, and the always-on connectivity of the 2000s, leading us to the full-blown digital economy and workforce we know today. And while almost all companies acknowledge that a website, email, CRM and marketing automation are all essential business tools, many have yet to tap into other opportunities where digital transformation can push them ahead of the competition.
Some businesses view this complete digital transformation as a burdensome and expensive push to add more software, and more tools to their teams’ already-bursting tech stacks. But when done strategically and mindfully, digital transformation can actually serve as a competitive differentiator, helping companies to speed growth, eliminate bottlenecks, and increase customer satisfaction.
In fact, a 451 Research survey found that roughly 80% of organizations are in the process of actively digitizing their business processes and investing in technologies to not only more effectively engage customers, partners or employees, but also reduce costs.
Maintaining a digital transformation edge is now a crucial step for those looking to establish or maintain a position as a market leader. A 2017 study by McKinsey & Company revealed that “digital further separates the high performers from the also-rans,” meaning digital transformation is the piece that enables leaders to grow and thrive at the expense of those lagging behind.
Game Changing Outcomes of Digital Transformation
Leaders in advanced stages of digital transformation are connecting systems to customers, enabling automation to reduce unnecessary manual processes and quickly analyzing new data to identify areas of opportunity. As a result, digital transformation leaders are now collecting massive amounts of data, but it’s how they are able to use that data that separates them from the laggards.
Since data is extremely fluid, it’s impossible to leverage it effectively if it lives across systems and clouds that are not consistent or connected. Companies must invest in the right technologies as they make their transformation to ensure the increased amount of data they are collecting is connected across systems, so that it may be analyzed, understood and integrated back in the business to deliver its full potential.
Leaders in the digital transformation movement also place a greater focus on their customers. A 451Research study found that organizations with a more advanced digital transformation strategy are making the majority of their investments in the customer experience. In order to create more personalized customer experiences, companies are shifting to account-based selling models and more targeted and personalized marketing campaigns. This trend is also reinforced by customers demanding easier and more modern ways of working with vendors, both in the B2B or B2C contexts. These business models are dependent not only on gathering more and better data, but on putting that data to use correctly, at the right times, and in the documents and communications that are sent to prospects and customers throughout the sales journey.
Achieving Total Customer Connectedness with Intelligent Documents
As modern software moves to the cloud, the connectedness goal of digital transformation relies on APIs and open standards to ensure the easy and accurate transfer of digital data between systems of record. Since many of the commonly-used systems are already in the cloud or connected online, integration here should be easy. Instead, the challenge of staying connected lies within the documents used to convey business information.
While most business documents are digital, they remain mostly uncontrolled — often created from scratch and disconnected from the mass of valuable data stored within CRM. And with manual efforts in place to manage these disconnected documents, oversights are common. Proposals can be generated using outdated templates with incorrect information. Email attachments are lost or too big to send, and contracts can be sent to customers even if an approval is missed.
So while documents are digital and have been for decades, the disconnectedness is cause for concern. Documents are the lifeblood of a company, connecting all parts of a business ecosystem; often defining pricing, production and profits; and relaying legal information to responsible parties. Disconnected documents can leave gaping holes in a organization’s digital transformation, but can be solved with an intelligent document solution.
How to Drive the Digital Transformation with Document Intelligence
Intelligent document solutions inform new documents based on data from how past documents impacted desired outcomes. In order to accomplish this, the data must be discoverable, searchable, connected and contextual. So for a digital transformation to be successful, its document intelligence must be supported by a consistent and connected data foundation, which occurs in three phases:
- Discover: finding and leveraging existing documents, typically working with sales teams to ensure the capture of documents as they are created from the CRM and sent to customers.
- Modernize: updating how new documents are created and negotiated, often through streamlined and automated processes. This phase also enables connectivity between documents and systems of record, using automation to populate data and eliminate the need for downstream approvals.
- Analyze: exploring document contents and processes to optimize business growth. With document intelligence, analysis tools, dashboards and reports are available and have the ability to tie business performance metrics to sales and marketing campaigns, and can speed up every step in the document process.
You can learn more about the the digital transformation journey and how documents are a key player in its success in the “Documents Make Digital Transformation a Reality” white paper.
