Digital Transformation Pays for Itself in Just Months
Digital transformation is all the rage because it helps any business power to the next level, but what exactly is it and how does it help your business? Digital Transformation is a medley of cloud-based systems integration, enterprise solutions, workflow and process redesign, wrapped up in a cross-platform user-friendly web-based interface, or Web App. Needless to say all of this also demands some shifts in workplace culture and thinking. While it makes sense for a disruptive start-up to launch with all the technological advantages from day one, isn’t this all too much to expect from most existing businesses?
Forbes Magazine pointed out in 2017 that many legacy companies have struggled to update their processes and reinvent themselves for the super fast modern world. There are an increasing number of examples of big businesses that made the switch successfully and are “killing it” — in North America these include StubHub, JetBlue, CapitalOne, and Domino’s. Corporations have plenty of inertia that allows newer startups to run rings around them.
But what about small and medium sized businesses, mom and pop businesses, and not for profit businesses? Isn’t digital transformation too complex, costly and time consuming? Well, the great news is that the approach taken today for transformation costs just a few percent of what a business could have expected to pay even 5 years ago. Digital transformation today will pay for itself in months rather than years through increased efficiencies, customer satisfaction and revenue growth.
The urgency is clear: any business that doesn’t adopt and adapt best practice IT solutions will fall behind their competitors very quickly. Now is a great time to get an edge: Smart Insights reported in 2017 that only 9% of companies have had a digital transformation process in place for more than 2 years, while 37% had no plans for it at all.
Today, best practice Digital transformation connects together a collection of existing pieces of software, each of which does one thing really well. Forward-thinking organizations are using the consumer’s smartphone App model with a curated set of affordable and integrated web services for the workplace. A modern enterprise solution is typically a collection of cloud-based applications that share data together through APIs to give an organization a coherent, fast, affordable digital ecosystem.
There is no point paying for massive, monolithic software solutions with huge service fees anymore. You don’t need a multi-million dollar solution from Oracle or SAP these days. A lot of the cloud software is free or very affordable. Meanwhile desktop, Web App and App versions are often included in the deal. Even social media can be used for your workplace communications, for example Workplace by Facebook, as well as Slack. Web Apps and Apps are generally intuitive or already familiar to staff who have used consumer versions so a fortune can also be saved with training costs.
Take a look at the cloud landscape of Apps below. These are just a few of the applications that can be seemlessly connected together with APIs to provide a business with a customized solution at minimal cost. When we do this kind of work at Six Trends we typically integrate 4–8 applications and build a gorgeous and easy to use cross-platform web-based interface for our customers, so they get their own Web App. The number of applications can be added to at any time. The process takes a team of 1–3 people just a few months.
Another advantage of this approach is that everything can be built in a modular way that allows a company to try elements out and discard them if they are not as useful as had been hoped, or upgrade with a better solution. This is great for businesses that are terrified of making big upfront financial commitments to IT. A solution is built up organically with plenty of iterations and feedback from staff.
Finally, one amazing advantage that digital transformation offers to a business is live data, continuously, on everything. This is one of the most transformative aspects and it allows managers at every level in a business to be nimble, responsive and ultra competitive. With effective data and great integrations a business can process and act intelligently, just like a smart person’s brain.
